At the end of John’s second year of seminary, we attended the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly in Fort Worth, Texas. A couple of days before the big event gets started each year, the ministers and many of their partners and spouses gather for “Professional Days.”

That year, the annual Berry Street Address was given by the Rev. Burton Carley, now serving the Church of the River in Memphis, TN. It was nothing short of remarkable:

“The Way Home”

The Rev. Burton D. Carley
The Berry Street Essay, 2005

Delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly
Fort Worth, Texas
June 23, 2005

The desire may begin without understanding what it is exactly that you are longing for. One thing is for sure. The urge is wrapped with a hollow feeling that has all the weight of missing something. You cast about for what it might be that haunts you. A fleeting shadow comes and goes at the corner of the eye. Quickly you turn to capture it without success. After a while you try to dismiss it, rationalize it, ignore it, but the yearning persists.

A story seeps up from the internal depths, breaking the surface between sleep and waking. It is Moses and God in conversation. I never know whether to envy Moses or be among those who were wisely thankful that there was someone either foolish enough or courageous enough to risk being in the presence of such sacred power. In that narrative from the ancient past God warns Moses that no one can look directly upon the divine face and live. Then it occurs to me as if by some revelation that this deep down desire may have a source other than my own making, and that the way there does not take me to a strange, awkward, foreign, and forbidding place. It occurs to me that the way there is the way home, a path out of the hollow up to the hallowed. A sense of place becomes clear and Meister Eckhart whispers in my ear: “God is at home. We are in the far country.”

(Read on … )