"Come, ye thankful people, come," goes a favourite harvest-time hymn; "All is safely gathered in, ‘Ere the winter storms begin." Our UU version, # 68 in Singing the Living Tradition, has changed the words slightly, but the idea of people, as well as crops, being gathered in, "safe before the storms begin" is still there, and I think it’s a good one to explore in this Ingathering Service at the end of our summer programme and the start of our new congregational year. This week I’ve received several e-mails from people who’ve been out of touch for several weeks and who are now saying, "Hope your summer was better than mine," or "What a washout of a summer that was!" Although this past week has been a particularly beautiful one, with lots of sunshine and some gentle rain, it perhaps came too late to avoid the sense some of us have that we didn’t really get much of a summer, and that gives a special poignancy to this service which tries to affirm that we’re refreshed as well as re-gathered.

This morning I’d like to suggest that even if you didn’t have a great, refreshing summer, you can still participate in the particular joy of this transition time, this beginning again in hope, this gathering together in a safe haven for at least a little while before storms of one kind or another begin. The idea of a safe congregation is one that several of us from the Board and the Children’s R.E. Committee have been looking at from time to time, and it’s one that’s applicable to the whole congregation, not just to the interactions between adults and children. We want Unitarian House to be a safe place, and our gatherings here, on Sundays and during the week, to be safe times for each of us. There are plenty of storms raging outside, as well as the tempests in teapots or in larger vessels that we may experience in our own interactions: we want to walk as safely as possible through the storms if we can’t get away from them, or don’t want to. Today may be one precious interlude of safety; we need to find out how to extend it into our life together throughout the year.

What does it really mean to be safe? One of the things I think it involves is acceptance, that precious quality reflected in the third of our seven Unitarian Universalist Principles -- "acceptance of one another". That was one of the wonderful things about the Unitarian congregation that I first discovered 22 years ago -- new though I was, I felt completely accepted by those who were there before me. There didn't seem any doubt that I was welcome, let alone any question of whether I'd be allowed to stay. You know the Robert Frost poem which says that "home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in"? The congregation felt like home to me in that sense: if I had to go there, they had to take me in. I’d like to think that this congregation feels like that to everyone who comes through the doors, too, and that it goes further than a grudging kind of tolerance; I hope it’s a welcoming acceptance of you whether you’re rich or poor, gay or straight, old or young, humanist or theist, radical or cautious, female or male or transgender -- as our reading said, whoever you are, wherever you are on your journey, I hope this is a safe place for you, and that you will feel gathered in to this beloved community.

For me, one of the characteristics of a safe place is being known there, not just by name, though that’s certainly part of it, but known for who we are. We may be able to impress the people we only see occasionally, when we're on our best behaviour, with our poise and personality, as long as we don’t spend too much time with them. Even at work, where we're usually fully-clothed, awake, functioning, we may be only partially known, but it would be wonderful if in this congregation we could be known the way we are at home, where we sleep and get up and stumble around half dressed, and let down our hair and our defences -- known for who we really are. We probably don't feel exactly and entirely that way here; at least, I don't. You may have seen me in a few of my unguarded moments, but I don't know how you’d react to the whole truth. But I do feel, and I wish deeply for you all to feel, that there isn't anything we specially have to hide from each other here, that it’s safe to disclose who you really are. I feel very little need to wear a mask here, or to pretend to be other than I am. And when I look at the people around me, I hope that it's the real person I'm seeing, that I can trust my perceptions, by and large, because it’s safe here and we have no need to hide from each other.

Another element of being in a safe place is that we have a sense of being in tune with those around us and with their general orientation to life. This doesn't mean that we never disagree among ourselves, but that we share a basic approach to living. If our ways were too different, too discordant, we wouldn’t feel safe and we'd probably go somewhere else. We sometimes refer to this sense of being in tune when we describe what brought us to a Unitarian Universalist congregation: "Here I find people who think like me", we say. "The people here have the same ideas I do." Often it's a huge relief after feeling out of tune with another denomination or tradition. I hope we can continue to feel that sense of comfort and safety even when we realize that we don’t all think alike or have the same ideas; I hope this will be a place where it’s safe to disagree, even on large and important matters, as long as we disagree with respect for each other.

Do you remember, as a little child, being in a strange place, frightened and lost, and then being taken home where we felt safe again. As older people we find it easy to identify with that old song, "It's very nice to go travelling, but it's so much nicer to come back." Strange and unknown places may be fascinating and exciting, but they’re not as safe as the known places. When you come home, you feel immediately at ease, comfortable, secure, relaxed. In the safe, known place, the only dangers which threaten us are so well known that we don’t see them as dangers at all. We're so used to the worn place on the rug, or the rickety step, that we never trip over it; we understand so well what sets off our friend's bad mood that we're able to avoid pressing that button most of the time. Knowledge is safety. It will be good if this congregation can be a place we know in that way.

The world beyond this congregation to a large extent doesn't feel safe anymore, does it? Well, perhaps it never did. Even as tiny babies we reacted with something like fear to loud noises and to falling. And later we felt unsafe in our mother's absence, or at a strange new school, or when we first tried to swim without our water wings -- or when we first drove in the city or on the highway. But in between times (the lucky ones among us at least), have known times of feeling safe and secure. Who can feel secure now? We lock up our houses, and try to have only safe sex, and drive defensively, and warn our children about neighbours and even family members as well as strangers, and after all that we have to face the threats of economic collapse and environmental disaster. No wonder we yearn for that brave old world, the little house on the prairie where we all took care of each other. Who can feel safe here in the late-twentieth century, when change is the only certainty? Perhaps all we can do, in this as in so many things, is try to create small safe havens, such as this beloved community, where we can rest for a short while to gather strength for facing danger.

As you can tell, I hope very much that this can be as safe a congregation as possible, a place of refuge and refreshment, a breathing space -- but I don’t think our retreat to safety should ever be more than a brief respite from the world outside. While it's a whole lot pleasanter to feel safe than to be scared, I believe we're not at our most human and real when we're completely at ease. Some of you might be old enough to remember the Pierre Berton book from the sixties, The Comfortable Pew. It pointed out how dangerously easy it is to be comfortable in a place of worship, so much so that we doze off and miss the message, so much so that we never feel moved to venture out from the congregation into the world. It’s dangerous to find things too comfortably familiar, to be lulled into being lazy. Perhaps, paradoxically, this congregation might even be most helpful, potentially, for those of you who find it little jarring, a little bothersome and inflexible and reminiscent of uncomfortable past experiences -- if those uneasy feelings stimulate you to examine what’s wrong and try to find ways you can feel safer.

Often in unsafe situations we feel constrained, on our best behaviour, always having to be mindful about what we do and say. That might not be a bad thing. Perhaps our UU emphasis on freedom of thought, freedom from guilt, freedom from rules, could stand to be balanced a bit by some disciplined thought, some awareness of ideals to be lived up to, some mindfulness of the consequences and implications of what we do. Let’s keep in mind that a truly safe place is not one in which it’s all right to do exactly what we feel like, but one in which the feelings and needs of others are always a factor to be kept in mind. Let's not be so at-ease here that we lose our mindfulness about what we're saying and doing.

The By-laws Committee has been working over the past few weeks to begin articulating the ways in which this congregation is governed. We’ve talked about the requirements for membership, and have found ourselves in agreement (as I anticipate that the Board will be) that if you support the leading principles of the congregation, it’s safe to expect that you will be accepted here. Away from here, acceptance is a chancy business and the world is a potentially unwelcoming place. One of the biggest questions of life, I think, is whether the world is ultimately friendly or hostile. Our religious tradition includes deep respect for the Universalist conviction that all people will finally be saved, accepted, welcomed, safely gathered in. Those with a different perspective see the probability of destruction, of universal damnation brought about not by God, necessarily, but by ourselves. Can we ever be truly safe in this universe, or are we really endangered, displaced people, displaced from an innocent, natural, animal way of being to which we can never return? I don't know the answer; I think that for us humans, acceptance by the world at large is at best questionable. But I do think we can make this place, this little world, friendly. Indeed, I think that’s one of our major tasks.

The unsafe world that we live in is a fascinating and wonderful place to be, but it can also be horribly alienating. There's a deep yearning in most of us for re-union, for belonging, being joined rather than alienated. The oceanic feeling, some call it, or a sense of oneness, that sense which was symbolized earlier as we poured our various waters into one container, into a unity from which they can now never be separated. This congregation can, I believe, be the setting for some of life’s sweet moments of unity, even while it also recognizes the worth and dignity of each separate and individual person.

In the end, the idea of safety is, I think, rather like the idea that we'll wake up tomorrow morning. "Live each day as if it's your last", the wise ones say. But we know that we must also live in the expectation that tomorrow will come and must be planned for. Similarly, we need to know that safety is a fragile and fleeting thing, never to be counted on completely, and at the same time we need to make safe places for ourselves and each other where we can rest in the familiar, the free and easy, the feeling of acceptance, of knowing and being known, of safety, harmony and participation. Then we'll be stronger to move out into the unfamiliar, the difficult, the uncertain and unknown, the dangerous, strange and unclear universe. May this place, this fellowship, this congregation, be just such a place for us all and, as often as we come here, may we be safely gathered in.