I’ve written about belonging already, and that amazing idea from Brené Brown that the opposite of belonging is fitting in - that true belonging means we can bring the fullness of who we are to our communities.
And it is the fullness of who we are – each of us – that we must say yes to if we are to belong and if everyone else here is to belong as well.
But it isn’t just about other people. It’s about ourselves too – saying yes to being human and our whole human experience. Saying yes to joy, and sorrow, and mistakes, and healing, and experimenting, and failing, and repairing, and repenting, and loving, and loving, and loving again.
Yes.
And.
The Yes, of course, matters. Without the yes, nothing happens.
But the And is important. For those who know anything about improvisation, the first rule is “yes/and” – in an improv performance, this means one person sets up the scene, and the response accepting that set up and continuing in the affirmative… even if it’s ridiculous and silly.
But this ‘yes/and’ approach works outside of performance too. In fact, the perfect example happened in 2019 while I an the religious educator I was working with were frantically searching for the right holiday pageant script and resigning ourselves to maybe having to write it ourselves. I had a notion of an idea one early December day, and I texted her, “I think we need a TARDIS.” She wrote back “I know where to get a big box.” Three weeks later, our pageant featured some time travel a la Doctor Who, complete with a big blue British police box. She said yes to my offer and continued our ‘scene.’
But yes/and isn’t just about the small things. It’s about bigger things too, and it makes all the difference in our approach to congregational life.
Imagine if we said yes to belonging, yes to experimenting, yes to curiosity – and then said and we might make mistakes, and we might discover something new, and we might have to let go of some assumptions, and we might have to make amends, and we might find we are stronger?
Yes/And frees us – we can say yes and change our minds. We can say yes and realize we’d made a mistake and repair it. We can say and to resting, or mentoring, or drawing better boundaries, and learn that taking care of ourselves is taking care of the community too. We can say yes to curiosity and discover we’d been hanging on to things out of nostalgia or learn what is actually important to hold on to. We can say yes to trying something different and learning we like it … or not.
And remember – we already know how to say yes/and – trying some new things and doing some hard things. I know, because we all did it in March 2020. And if we can do that, we can do anything.
We are, in fact, a people of Yes/And.
Yes/And is embedded in our Universalist theology, after all….
Universalism reminds us that we are loved, and whole, and worthy no matter our successes or failures.
Universalism values our uniqueness, our gifts and our quirks, and honors our longing with belonging.
Universalism tells us to keep coming back because there is always a Love holding us.
Universalism reminds us that we all belong, all of us, with all of who we are, fully on display, fully us, fully welcome.
That is sacred. That is Yes/And.
SayingYes/And is a sacred act – it is an intimate affirmation of infinite possibility.
Yes.
And.
Programming note: I will be on vacation later this month, so there will be no Hold My Chalice October 24th and 31st.