Happy new congregational year! I'm so very glad to be here with you all this morning. The past year was my first year of full-time ministry with you and it was a good one for me. The summer was nothing short of amazing! I hope that however the past congregational year, and this summer, have been for you, you had the gift of some bright moments to treasure in your memory during this year and beyond.

We're much the same as when we met in June, but there's newness in us, too. We're leading slightly new lives, all of us - we're not set in our ways -- but I'm glad we're mostly the way we were in the Spring and can recognize each other and enjoy our familiarity and hearing what our friends did over the summer and what we plan for this year. What happened in our lives over the course of the past year has affected us and become part of us; it's contributed to who we are this morning, and to some extent it will influence how we will be in this year.

To some extent: that's what I most want to talk about. I had an experience with planning this service that I've had once or twice before - I was quite careful about choosing the theme, but then the title just popped into my head and since it did I've spent quite a while wondering what I was thinking! "It's a whole new ballgame": not an English expression, I believe, and probably related to baseball rather than another sport, though you can perhaps correct me on that - certainly not cricket -- but applicable to just about any game and many life situations, as witnessed by the way most of us have probably used it at one time or another, or at least had a sense of what it means when we hear it.

But one of the things I've discovered is that it's not good to assume we share exact understandings of words and phrases, so let me tell you what the expression means to me. Like so many everyday phrases, it's loaded with meanings. It means, first of all, that the situation is not quite what we thought it was. We may have been in what seemed like a losing game for us, when suddenly it turns around and we start to see that maybe we can win, and "it's a whole new ballgame"! Conversely, perhaps, we were beginning to be a bit self-satisfied and to coast along, sure that we have it all sewn up, when suddenly an opponent takes on unexpected strength and confidence, and wham! It's a whole new ballgame!

It means (for me) that what's happened before doesn't necessarily have much effect on what's going to happen now. Losing (or winning) the first set in tennis, even by a score of 6-love, is insignificant if the second set goes entirely the other way; by the third set "it's a whole new ballgame." It seems to me to mean also that the old rules don't apply: they might have been absolutely right for basketball, but this is football - it's a whole new ballgame. I think it also means that one new factor can change everything, like the rain which clears the field for an interval and when the players come back to a very different surface underfoot - well, it's a whole new ballgame!

You may have other meanings for this expression, but rather than getting carried away with word games, fascinating though they are, let's ponder for a moment what relevance it might all have for the year ahead of us. Is it true, for example, that the situation in our congregation is not quite what we thought it was? Is it possible that although we may have been in what seemed like a losing game for us, it could suddenly turn around and we could start to see that maybe we can win? I think that could be true in relation to our financial situation, for example, and that although that thermometer on the graph in the foyer never has quite reached the top, we might be surprised to find givings delivering more than was promised.

Reality can be better than the predictions! It could happen in relation to our upcoming vote in two weeks, that our dread of people leaving if they aren't happy with the results may be greatly exaggerated, and that our members are much more resilient and committed to this community than we'd feared. On the other hand, perhaps, we may have been a bit self-satisfied and coasting along, sure that we're in the right and know what's right, when suddenly a window opens up into another person's soul, and wham! It's a whole new ballgame! I do hope for this year that we can stay open to all the possibilities that we may have our expectations overturned - that we may have amazing revelations - that we may need to reassess the whole situation - without removing ourselves from the field.

And: what's happened before doesn't necessarily have much effect on what's going to happen now. This congregation has been adventurous and brave on many occasions, and has experimented with all kinds of ideas and inspirations, some of which have worked and some haven't. Remembering the experiments and efforts which didn't pan out, or which seemed too much trouble for too little benefit, it's tempting to say, when someone comes up with the idea all over again, "Oh we tried that and it didn't work." We tend to forget that that was then and this is now. It may be worth trying again, because the last time we had less experience, different people were involved, things have changed in a number of ways, and perhaps most important of all - the atoms and molecules of the universe are distributed in a different permutation, through randomness, or luck, or grace, or however you think of it. It's a whole new ballgame!

And: the old rules don't apply. We human beings love structure and predictability, don't we? Personally, I get horribly discombobulated if I can't see the lane markings on the road, and in a broader sense, I always like to know the rules so I can decide whether to break them or not. If we know the rules, we have some kind of control, even if it's just in our heads and not in reality. There's a certain comfort level when the game is understood. I was watching "Friends" the other night, and Ross was driving Rachel somewhere when he was stopped by a police officer. He said, "I couldn't possibly have been doing more than 60!" "No," said the cop; "You were doing 37." "Surely you're not stopping me for driving too slowly!?" "Yes, I am." Uh, oh: it's a whole new ballgame.

In the life of our congregation this year, perhaps there will be changes in the rules, or perhaps we'll become aware of some recent changes, such as in the by-laws which we adopted at our last AGM. Did you know that we're currently adopting policies and procedures for each of the many committees which keep this congregation going? They haven't been ratified by the Board yet, and maybe you'd like to see them and have some input into their final form; if so, ask Phil de Gruchy, the keeper of the Policies and Procedures Manual, to give you a look at them. The last thing any of us wants is to keep secrets from anyone, but we're feeling our way in many of these areas, with no previous written policies to go by. It often feels like driving along a road with no lane markings; the rules have changed; it's a whole new ballgame.

And: one new factor can change everything. One new factor this year is the independence of the Canadian Unitarian Council. You can ask Mary Bennett to tell you more about this in the discussion after the service, but one thing I know is that it's a lot like the teenager leaving home - living away from the old home is such a desirable and timely and appropriate move, but there are so many things we didn't anticipate! We're responsible for ourselves now, with no one at our former headquarters in Boston to pick up the mess we make, or bail us out of our financial difficulties, or provide us with a meal on the table every night. Sure, we've been given a reasonable allowance, and we certainly haven't been cut off from the family, but there's no doubt it's different in every way, because it's different in this one important way: we're the independent, autonomous, Canadian Unitarian Council. It's a whole new ballgame.

But unless your life revolves completely around this congregation and the Unitarian movement, which it does for a few treasured people but not many, perhaps a more important question for you is about how this year will be new for you, personally and individually, in your family, your work, your soul. I ask you to consider: how is your life situation not quite what you thought it was? What is intruding itself into your day-to-day existence, like a turnaround in a ballgame, like a glimmer of hope that you may not even want to let yourself see, or like a warning light that you equally want to avoid? Can you look at how things are without seeing it all through the lenses of how things have been? Can you admit the possibility that perhaps this year, this week, this day, could be the beginning of something totally new, so that one day you'll look back and say, "Yes; September 9, 2001 - that was the opening innings of a new game"?!

Perhaps it's an old and almost forgotten friendship being revived. Perhaps it's a realization that the work you're in is not what you're going to do for the rest of your life. Perhaps it's something unwanted that will challenge you to stretch beyond who you are now. Whatever it is, I hope that this congregation can support you and nurture you as you grow, and that you can find here the new rules to replace the old ones, never forgetting how important the old ones were in the earlier stage of your life. Individually and as a congregation, we can do great things together! In the words of the hymn which we'll be singing in a few minutes, we are a movement "which reveres the past, but trusts the dawning future more."

The late UU minister Peter Fleck has written about the importance of accepting what's happened to us, our history, while at the same time refusing to be bound or defined by it. He described his own often painful efforts to make sense of his past by trying to understand all the factors in his upbringing and in his personality and in external events which led to things being the way they were. Fleck says,

It is as if I have spent my life making pieces of a huge puzzle. . . . in trying to complete the puzzle, I find that certain pieces are missing and others seem to have no place. And it is late in the day. I have no time to create the missing pieces, no time to restructure the puzzle in order to create room for the spare pieces. The whole thing doesn't add up. At least not with the high degree of perfection which, in my book, would mean that all the pieces fit together, leaving no holes and no extras. . . . [But] lately I have come to believe that these negative experiences may well be what life is all about, that success is not the absence of failure, but the overcoming of failure. Not the absence of weakness, but the overcoming of weakness. Not the absence of mistakes, but the acceptance of the mistakes, which means the forgiving of the mistakes.

For we have the right to make mistakes; we are supposed to make mistakes. Things seem to be structured that way. . . . We will make our peace with the past when we learn to forgive ourselves for what we have done and left undone, and then learn to live with both.

And living with both, our history and our hope, is what makes for a whole new ballgame, I believe. Regardless of whether we're winning or losing, regardless of whether the rules change or a new factor gets thrown into the equation, it can always be a whole new ballgame if we let it! Eugene Bianchi, author of a book on life's spiritual journey, says it can happen even at the most difficult of time, perhaps especially then:

When our environment of safety and support is withdrawn, the self's equilibrium is shaken. . . . We feel emotionally at sea, drifting without a rudder or wind in the sails [thus preparing for] a change of heart, a turning around of the self, through which we can begin to understand differently what we have always seen.

Perhaps, just as physical exercise helps keep athletes in good shape for their sports, what we might call psychic or spiritual exercise -- the exercise of our capacity for meeting life's challenges -- helps keep our beings, our spirits, our vitality in good shape. We can build anew, with hard work and resolution and openness to the grace of being forgiven, of having another chance, a clean slate, a new ballgame, or however you like to express it. We don't even need new material, or new people, or new personalities, to make a new life. It can be done with what's at hand. As T.S. Eliot said, "Success is relative; it is what we can make of the mess we have made of things." And the best news may be that making something wonderful from our mistakes is not only a success in itself, but strengthens and fits us for increasingly fulfilling and vital lives as we grow, individually and collectively.

I wish for you, for this congregation, for us, that this new year we may have more recognition of the truth that a healthy organism is not one that's static, but one that's healing its inescapable wounds. I wish for us all that we may see more open roads before us and be readier to travel them. May we open the year by taking steps along the beckoning way. And I end with words by Richard Gilbert, Unitarian Universalist minister in Rochester, who knows so well the value of community, from a poem called "This Place Is An Oasis":

In every desert of the spirit there is a life-giving oasis.
There stands a tree green with the colour of growth,
Brown with the colour of rootedness.
There reside beneath the surface life-giving waters . . .
Whose taste is rich with opportunity and challenge . . .
Here we take on strength for the long journey --- across the sands.

May we begin the journey and the game again, this whole new ballgame, welcoming the challenges, and filled with the strength of this life-giving oasis, our congregation of friends. So may it be.