 The deer in winter, or… reflections on trust
I grew up in a small town in New England called North Branford, Connecticut. My parents still live there. Our street backs up on water company property and is host to any number of wild creatures – from coyote to turkeys to deer. Once we saved an injured turtle, nursed him in my father’s study (a place chosen for its easily cleaned floors), and set him free in the deep woods behind our house. Another time we cared for a sea gull with a broken wing, and on another occasion, a blackbird. You might say our home was host to the broken and downtrodden.
My parents, whose influence began this tradition, continue the work. The other day my mother shared the joy and humor of their current exploit – feeding the deer struggling to find food in the depths of winter. My father keeps the deer food in our garage. (I didn’t even know there was such a thing as “deer food.”) The deer have learned to come to the edge of our yard and wait. When my folks notice their presence, my dad fetches their food and places it under a nearby tree.
Just the other day, two deer approached our yard – a mother (#12 from the tag on her ear) and her youth. When my father opened the door, the young one sprinted back at least 50 yards, and the mother about half that much, but with less exuberance. From a distance, they both watched my father place the food, and when he turned to walk back to the house, they began walking toward the tree – the youth, again, exhibited more bounce than his mother. My father, halfway to the house, stopped and looked back…the deer stopped and looked at him. He then continued to the house and the deer again continued to the tree. Again, my father stopped and the scene repeated. When he finally got to the house, the mother deer was almost at the tree. When he entered the house, she walked to the tree and her youth quickly, with a giant bounce, hurled himself forward to join her.
There is so much tenderness in this interchange – a blossoming of trust. The mother deer has learned to trust our food and to tolerate my father. The youth knows to trust his mother and follows her every lead – while adding a bit of his spirited exuberance. In the end three creatures are fed who would otherwise be hungry. The deer receive the nutrients of the earth. My father receives the nutrients of interconnection and service. And all of this is possible because of a blossoming trust.
Trust is an evocative term for Unitarian Universalists. Over our nearly 2000 years of development, we have customarily been called the heretics and outsiders – looked upon by the majority with distrust, if not disgust. Even today, it is rare to mention our namesake to a friend or associate without eliciting a barrage of questions, if not concerns. In addition, we ourselves developed a solid distrust of orthodoxy – even to the extent of questioning the very nature of the religious experiment itself. We rejected the commonly held belief that to build a religion one needed a creed. And afterwards, wondered if indeed we were a religion or if this was something new – something yet unnamed. In conclusion, we historically distrust the status quo and the held tradition, preferring instead an outsider status and the ideal of progression.
I love our history and find great promise in our particular experiment but wonder if we could work on transforming our self-understanding. I especially sense it poses a hindrance to enabling a climate of trust.
Let’s go back to the example of the deer for an illustration: The deer trust my father because he has been placing food under the tree for a long while, and not once has harm come to them from partaking. The deer’s trust is built on tradition. My father feeds the deer because he knows they are a part of this interdependent web and that their lives are worthy of his service. My father feeds the deer because he has included them in his circle – they are not outsiders, but insiders.
If we are going to be a faith that feeds the spiritually hungry, we need to elicit trust; to do so, we need to revise our self-understanding. First, we need to examine our connection to the religious traditions that birthed our faith. We need to honor the gift of these connections while recognizing the particular beauty of the place we have carved out within the fold of the world’s religions. And second, we need to foster a sense of interdependence and inclusion – recognizing especially that our message is no-longer an “outsider” message, but one that speaks to a surprising majority in this nation, if not a majority of the world’s population.
So many who seek a religious home are concerned about, if not afraid of, joining a new community. Part of being a welcoming faith is recognizing this tenderness and creating an environment that fosters trust. We do this at UU Sterling in so many ways. Where we struggle, I sense the whole of the Unitarian Universalist community struggles – we all struggle with our self-understanding. Just what are we and what can we offer to others? I believe if we define this with more accuracy and honesty, we may find that we are something quite extraordinary and that we offer something that so many people are desperate to find.
Indeed, we are a religion where spirituality and reason converge – where tradition is balanced with progress – where integrity is prized above allegiance – where hope and honesty can co-exist – where faith and freedom are one.
This is not some outsider’s heresy – this is a potent, vital, and necessary way to be religious in our ever-changing global world. This is a religion we can and must trust.
-Rev. Anya
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