Sanctuary is Wherever You Are

I don't exactly know why, but I went to a Sunday service this morning. I don't think I can rightfully say "I went to church," but I did go to the meeting house of the Madison Unitarian Universalist Society, which is about as far from the modest meeting house of the local Quakers as you can possibly get. Indeed, they offer tours of the buildings after each and every service, all year round. Has something to do with the fact that the original building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and something to do with the fact that this is a congregation that has a lot of remnant evangelical issues still flapping about on their to-do lists.

What I mean by this is that they have an awful lot of debt to pay-down. The addition to the original FLW construction cost a lot and then, as we all know by now, there was the "Economic Downturn." People, I have to say this: We got what we deserved. We thought we could have it all, even though our entire national economy is based on over-consumption of a finite resource which we buy at great cost from distant nations that don't like us. But we kept on buying, building, increasing our indebtedness, and now we finally have a scapegoat: the "Economic Downturn." It makes it seem like it wasn't our fault at all, like it was some machination of fate to which we cruelly fell victim.

But it was not. We created this. And the parking lot at the First Unitarian Society of very liberal Madison, Wisconsin was full of cars even on a day when the city had shut down most of its downtown streets to all but non-motorized means of transportation. Yes, there were Priuses among the cars; this is, after all, a congregation of liberals, most of whom have money, even if they no longer dress up for Sunday services or even iron their shirt collars.

A friend of mine belongs to the FUS here, and one day last summer she told me she'd spent the weekend sitting at a table at a community festival in our Eastside neighborhood talking to people about the FUS. "Why would  you do that?" I asked, thinking it sounded suspiciously like missionary work. "Well, we need to pay our staff," she explained. "So of course we need to enlarge our membership."

When those who belong to a spiritual organization start recruiting new members to pay their bills, it is time to stop building. The new UU building is lovely, and sets a high standard for sustainable building practices and materials, living up to the enormous cultural weight of its predecessor building, which is a national historic monument. The sound in the sanctuary is amazing. The sense of spaciousness and harmony are unmistakeable. And they didn't need it. Congregations do not need to grow. People do not need to drive across a city to enjoy an hour of intelligence and peace and the pure voice of a strong, pure soprano. Good restaurants do not need to become chains. Local is okay. Small is fine.

We don't need to make the world all like us. We just need to let the people of the world breathe and eat and snuggle with their children on an evening when the moon is full.  And we can do a lot more toward this simple goal if we stop driving cars rather than building designer sanctuaries of holiness built on assumptions of constant growth.