The Gift of Welcome

Wherever you have come from, whoever you are, whomever you love, whatever your journey has been, it has led you here. Welcome.

Thus speaketh every Convener on Sunday mornings at UUFM, in their own language. But what do we really mean by welcome?

According to this month’s Chalice Circle packet,

Welcome dates back to Anglo-Saxon days, from Beowulf. The word was originally wilcuma in Old English, a combination of wil (pleasure) plus cuma (guest). The verb form, wilcumian, meant to receive someone or something with pleasure.

So, to be welcoming, we must take pleasure in receiving a guest, and offer them a pleasurable experience upon arrival. And as UUs, we are committed to creating a welcoming experience for everyone. Wow! That’s a big responsibility!

A big responsibility, but not unmanageable. I think it entails:

1. Finding a pleasant attitude on my own before someone arrives. It’s possible they’ll be in a great mood and it will be easy to receive them with pleasure. But they might also be sad, grouchy, or distracted. They might remind me of my favorite aunt, or the bureaucrat to whom I attribute my last migraine. To truly welcome everyone, I must be grounded in my own joy and love for this place, confident that it is wide and warm enough to bring goodness to anyone who enters our doors.
2. Being curious about what the guest wants and needs from our space and meeting them with generosity. To welcome everyone means to care about everyone. We may not be able to meet all their desires, but we can learn a lot by listening and trying to make them comfortable.
3. Protecting the gathered community from harmful behavior. Welcoming all people does not mean welcoming all behavior. Our Covenant of Right Relations sets a loving standard for how to treat each other. When someone acts out of covenant, it makes the space unwelcoming for others — and then it’s our obligation to intervene and invite them into covenant.

The practice of welcoming is a gift, both for the welcomer and the welcomee. But it’s up to the welcomer to take responsibility for giving the gift. You can take responsibility by signing up to serve as a greeter — talk to Shirley Hobrock, who is redesigning this team — but we need more than a couple people in this role on Sunday morning! It’s something we all take on when we claim membership in this community and commitment to our mission and vision. In both these statements, we aim for inclusion and diversity. To move forward honestly, we have to admit that the community within our walls is less diverse than the community beyond. Learning to give the gift of welcome, therefore, will require understanding people who are different from us. 

On August 27th, our guest speakers Don Kang and Dr. Aliah Mestrovich Seay shared several teachings for how to welcome those who are different from us. One is that respectful and loving behavior varies by culture and background. For Aliah, it means celebrating our relationship publicly. For Don, it means acts of service. (I encourage you to watch the video of their reflection to understand the context of these comments.) Another takeaway is that when someone tells you about their suffering, the most important gift you can give is to believe them. For those of us with more social privilege than the majority of the population, it’s important to strike a pose of radical humility when welcoming someone whose identities have been suppressed or attacked by mainstream culture. When they tell us they’ve been harmed, especially when they’re pointing out patterns we ourselves are engaged in, we must believe them. Often, as a consequence, we will change our behavior — and be more welcoming to them and others. There is much more to say on the topic, as it has been a major theme in Unitarian Universalist circles over the last few years. Many of you read Widening the Circle of Concern, a core UU text on welcoming published in 2020. It is now available as an audiobook, a pdf, and in print at the UUA bookstore, and on our Reference shelf in the Alsop Fellowship Hall. I will be sharing additional resources in the coming months.

I have focused this column on practices for offering welcome. I want to close by inviting you, also, to receive welcome. I welcome you into Autumn at UUFM, especially with the first two Sunday services of the month. On September 3rd, we will launch our Chalice Web, a small group ministry where you are invited to simply listen and grow. (Learn more about the Chalice Web in the article below.) And on September 10th, we will have our Water and Fire Communion Ingathering, a multigenerational service to launch the new church year with play and ritual. On September 17th and 24th, you’ll be invited into our larger faith community, the Unitarian Universalist Association, by your delegates to last June’s General Assembly.

Wherever you have come from, whoever you are, whomever you love, whatever your journey has been, it has led you here. I am glad you are here. Let us welcome each other into the next leg of the journey.

Warmly,

Pastor Isa

Pastor Isa will be away through Labor Day and Sept 23-24.