A Story For All Ages
A Visit From Josephine Shaw Lowell
Alan Kindler introduces the time field generator that takes the congregation back to 1895, the year the existing Unitarian Church of Staten Island sanctuary was dedicated. We selected this time in the hope of hearing from Josephine Shaw Lowell what the Unitarian Church of Staten Island means to her.
*Note: this is an imaginary talk that Josephine Shaw Lowell could have given to the Unitarian Church of Staten Island based on materials and books about her and her family's life.
The Story of A Small Church: The Unitarian Church of Staten Island 1852-1977 by Horace Colpitts
Good morning. My name is Josephine Shaw Lowell, better known in this church as Effy. I speak to you this morning as you dedicate this new sanctuary about how much this church means—has always meant, will always mean, to so many.
My parents, Francis George and Sarah Blake Sturgis Shaw were among the founding members of this church. My sisters and I moved to Staten Island when I was twelve years old. I loved riding horses. This church was like a second home for us.
My brother, the late Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, was educated off this Island but he always wanted to come back to Staten Island. He and my husband, Charles Russell Lowell, died in the War Between the States. I worked on the battlefield tending the wounded men until my Charles died just a short while before our daughter, Carlotta, was born.
Here is where I learned what it meant to be a Unitarian and a leader when I served on the Board of Trustees. My sister Anna was more dedicated, serving as President of the Board for 16 years. Any of you who ever served as president know how much this church means to our family by virtue of her years of service. This church holds an unparalleled place in my heart and surely, it must in your hearts as well because you are here in this lovely sanctuary, with this rose window, saved from the winds that blew down the previous church building.
My family always had plenty of money but our parents educated us to care about other people and to work hard to insure that everyone has access to a decent life. After my husband died, Carlotta and I moved back to Staten Island to live with my parents. It was difficult after losing my brother and husband but I put my energy into doing good things. I assume that is why you all are here as well—to make the world a better place where people are free, to learn, question and grow together. That is part of the Unitarian faith I will always love.
Later, I went to Virginia to start schools with the Freedman’s Association for children who had been denied an education because of the color of their skin. I reported the bad conditions of women in prison and the abuses of those in institutions because they are poor or suffer from mental illness. I helped get benefits for children and widows and legislated for those who were not allowed to “speak for themselves”.
New York Governor Tilden appointed me as the first woman Commissioner of the New York State Board of Charities. I always believed that we must do more than give a hand out to those living in poverty; we must look to the root causes of poverty, hunger and joblessness. We need to create work places that are safe and just, where women workers receive fair treatment and compensation.
So I established the New York Charity Organization, the House of Refuge for Women and I am considering making a list of stores that treat women workers well. It’s a short list now but I hope that it will grow as people understand the importance of equality for women.
You see, I am here today because I first learned about equality, justice, respect and compassion from my family and this church. This Church of the Redeemer, this Unitarian Church on Staten Island, is more than the building we occupy and dedicate today. It is steeped in this kind of service and concern for the many, not just the few. May this church, my church, our church, continue for hundreds of years more!
"Slogging Through the Mangroves: Whose Are We Anyway?"
© Rev. Susan Karlson
October 23, 2011
Unitarian Church of Staten Island
This summer my sweetheart, Alan, and I visited our good friends in St. Pete’s Beach, Florida. After several days of rain and museum hopping, we glided out on the water behind their house and ventured into the mangrove swamps with our kayaks, single file. Russ suggested we place our paddle vertically alongside the kayak in the narrowest part of the mangroves because it wouldn’t fit horizontally. We could just grasp hold of the mangroves to pull ourselves through those shallow, narrow lanes.
“Okay,” I thought, “how hard can that be?” but my heart started racing and when I reached out to pull myself along, black crabs scurried their way along, blending in beautifully beside the brackish muddy water and the bent branches of the mangroves. So I checked in with my mind and emotions—“how long could this last?” Surely, not long! What seemed like an hour later, we emerged, only to go a short distance and round another narrow passageway with more of the same.
Alan and my friend, Russ, paced themselves and enjoyed the ride. Alan even dreamed of a full moon paddle in the mangroves. Russ and I didn’t sign on for that. After five hours kayaking, probably 1/3 of which was in the mangrove swamps, we made our way back to the dock. Though I wanted to just get back to the house, there was nowhere to go except forward. It was a challenging experience for me—my arms ached, my nerves shook, I got irritable even in this beautiful wilderness environment.
I wondered during and after this slog through the mangroves, what made me so fearful. I reflected on other traumatic crises in my life, such as the days in childhood when a relative scared me into believing I would drown. Ever since, I have had to fight my way through that fear to enjoy snorkeling or kayaking, to love being in the ocean as much as I love being beside it.
Ultimately, at moments like this, I return to the questions people have been asking since the first moments of conscious reverie of humankind—what is the foundation of my existence? What brings me to this moment now? How can I emerge from this place more grounded and steeped in my purpose? Where do I turn when I’m shaken to my core?
But there was an even more powerful experience in my childhood. Lying alone in my room one night, I felt a presence that remains with me even now. There were no words, no burning bushes, no scrolls to swallow—only this pervading sense of peace, of something that was always available, that would never leave me (though I could choose to ignore it). It is that Presence that I understand as God, though that name is too limiting and small a descriptor. Even at such a young age, I felt that I was not singled out, that this Presence was like the air we breathe—inside us, around us, all pervasive.
Last month I served as a Disaster Chaplain at the 9/11 Memorial in the week after it opened to the public. Red Cross and Disaster Chaplains were on hand to be a presence, a witness in case people needed to talk or felt overwhelmed. No matter what others may think about the Memorial and its usefulness or its opulence, I have to say that I again experienced something of the holy that day.
A little background: There is a fountain carved out of rock that rests in our Memorial Garden here at the Unitarian Church of Staten Island. We saw images of creating that fountain during the Memorial Garden Anniversary worship service last week. That fountain is dedicated to Richard Myhre, the son-in-law of two of our members. While at the 9-11 Memorial I looked his name up in the listings and I saw his photo and where his name could be found in the North Pool. I made a rubbing of his name. And I thought of his son who was so young when his father died.
I looked down at the seemingly bottomless pools where the water cascades continuously, relentlessly, powerfully and it seemed to speak to me of the womb from which we all come and of a cavernous sorrow, almost too much to bear sometimes, that engulfs us when we lose someone we love, when we lose a dream that we’ve long cherished. It evokes both the beginning and ending of Life, but not the beginning or end of Love.
There in that place, I again felt the presence of that which is so much greater than this small personality. I felt touched by something so vast, so universal that I have known before, that many know as the high and low ebbs of life—something so powerful, so binding, so intense that we yearn to find it again.
It is “that-which-cannot-be-named” in the Jewish teachings that is also part of the Sources of Unitarian Universalism. It is our own name writ large that connects us to one another and holds us together even when we have forgotten who we are, whose we are; even if we have lost the threads of our ancestors—we are still “…tied in a single garment of destiny” as Dr. King said.
We are reminded of the ancestors beyond ancestors and the descendants, too—the connecting thread at the heart of Unitarian Universalism, at the core of this faith that will not let me go, that may not let you go no matter how much we get disappointed or disillusioned with life, with the greed and violence that shatters our society.
The water element in our Memorial Garden fountain, the bottomless cascading pools at the 9-11 Memorial, that narrow and twisted mangrove swamp bring me back to those eternal questions we ask ourselves when the fathomless and unanswerable is before us: “whose am I?”, and in the collective, “whose are we?”.
“Whose are we anyway” when we are up against a wall, panicky or disoriented about the direction of our lives, our country, our church, or our families?
A quote from Josephine Shaw Lowell, one of the 19th century mothers of this church, seems as relevant now with the deepening unrest and concern over our troubled economy and erosion of democracy decried by Occupy Wall Street and other movements around the globe. In her opposition “to both the Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars” of her time, she said "We paid a bitter price to free ourselves from the sin of slavery, and the nation will again pay a bitter price to free itself from the sin of empire, if, driven by fear of financial distress or lured by hope of wealth, it now deserts its ancient ideals."
Unitarian Universalists hold no common theological beliefs—we are all over the map. What ancient ideals then bring us together? What is it that holds us together when the ocean of sorrow cascades upon us; when the disparity in our country wrenches our hearts; when the one place we felt we always belonged seems to have changed and it’s not our home anymore?
Though we come from different theological vantage points, we share some common landmarks that tie us through history to people of action who moved the wheel of justice and liberal religion forward. I see the Divine in that, in our ethical principles, and in our willingness to question both our society and ourselves. There is something to grasping the gnarly branches of the mangrove that will move us forward though we don’t know how long it will take or how difficult the journey. We move the wheel of justice and transformative growth forward in our own time and place. Not simply alone but together.
Whose are we? Our answers will differ but perhaps we share one perspective— that we belong to one another, that we are connected on this earth that is our “Blue Boat Home.” As Peter Mayer sings, “drifting here with my ship’s companions, all we kindred pilgrim souls, the wide universe is the ocean I travel, and the earth is my blue boat home.”
We are all on this excursion together, joined through the imprint we make on those we leave behind. May our gifts include a vast reservoir of kindness and an awareness of how linked together we are—just like Josephine Shaw Lowell and the generations of Unitarian and Universalist do-ers before us. May it ever be so.
No comments:
Post a Comment