The Taming of Foxes

12-10-23

Rev. Douglas Taylor

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/aI3p8CVOvuM

“What does that mean – ‘tame’?” The Little Prince asked the fox.

“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to establish ties.”

My sermon today is about establishing ties. The heart of our Unitarian Universalist congregation is the establishing of ties; it is about connection. There are many reasons why you who are here have chosen to keep showing up. You may be here for the amazing music or the uplifting message, you may be here for the stories or the rituals of candles and silence. It might be for the free coffee after the service, or something less tangible like the feeling of belonging or of being part of something larger than yourself. A very common reason is for community.

People do not usually join Unitarian Universalist congregations to be forgiven of their sins, or to be taught the right way to believe, or because their family expects it of them. We come – more often than not – for community, to be together with other people who share our values of respect and curiosity, compassion and justice, truth and love. Our work as a congregation is to establish ties, to build those connections, to create a congregation together.

In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book The Little Prince (which we used for our reading this morning,) the fox talks about this as being ‘tamed.’ To be tamed, according to the fox, is to see the one who has tamed you as unique and very important – and in turn, you become very important and unique to them. To see and be seen, to know and be known. The Fox tells the Little Prince this is what it means to be tame.

I received a new game a few days ago that relates to all of this. It was a game I supported on kickstarter over a year ago, and it finally arrived a little over a week ago. I’m very excited by this new game. It’s called “The Fox Experiment,” and the premise is based on the decades-long scientific efforts to domesticate foxes by the Soviets that began in 1958. In real life, Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut gathered a group of Russian silver foxes and bred the ones that showed the most interest in humans. Each successive generation was again selected for friendliness, only the friendliest pups became parents. The hope was to recreate the thousand-year long domestication process of dogs in the span of a few decades for these foxes.

In the game, you build a deck of fox pups working to increase traits like floppy ears, wagging tails, and spots on their fur. Each new fox is given a friendliness rating in the game. The higher the friendliness rating, the more dice you get to build the next generation. In the real experiment, the scientists also gave each fox what they called a friendliness rating.

Assuming, for a moment, I am correct that our congregation’s work is to establish ties – what do you think your friendliness rating might be? The fox told de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince that to be tame was to establish ties. So maybe our UUCB mission statement should say something about taming one another?

I’m not suggesting we actually do that. “Taming” has a paternalistic tone that doesn’t sit well – as if the only value of an animal is in relation to humans. But consider this a playful entrance into the serious space in which we talk about how we are here to establish ties, to make friendly connections together.

My colleague Cynthia Snavely once summed up our faith saying, ‘Connection is our holiest word.’ The Latin root of the word ‘religion’ is ‘ligare,’ the same root for ‘Ligament,” to tie or bind, to connect! Re-ligare – or Religion – would be to re-bind, to re-connect. We Unitarian Universalist ministers do like to tease out the Latin of roots of our language now and then. 

All around us are forces pulling us apart. We live in disconnected and alienating times. There are powers that want us isolated and lonely so as to be more easily manipulated and controlled. I don’t mean this at a conspiracy theory level – it’s just become a tactic for our consumeristic culture. And we are better consumers when we are isolated and lonely. As Unitarian Universalists we make a commitment to reconnect. Our distinctive religious work as a faith community, is the work of connection.

There are a few reliable ways to build these connections here together. If you attend Sunday morning worship regularly, that is certainly a good thing. But how well do we get to know each other during that hour? Certainly we are holding the silence together, we are listening to amazing music and uplifting messages together. The candles of Joys and Sorrows opens up some invitations to connections with the other people in the room. The announcements become very important when you look at like this. But most of this hour of worship is preparation time for the connections that we make outside of this hour in our congregation.

To establish ties and deepen your relationships in this congregation, it helps to do more than just show up on Sunday mornings. Join the choir, host a table at the Art and Gift Show or help in the kitchen, teach a class, serve as an usher or on the Caring Team. One reliable way to establish ties, and to really become a member of this community, is to serve in some fashion: to offer your gift, to volunteer, to be of use in some way.

The other reliable way is to receive. Join a class, a book discussion, a workshop, or our Chalice Circles program as a way to learn something new; but often as important – it is an opportunity to meet people and get to know them … and to get known. Unitarian Universalism does not work well as a spectator religion. We are here to build community together, to participate in creating what we are as a congregation. You have a role in that process – in the giving and receiving that creates this community of connections in which we thrive.

We have a new program starting up next month: our new Chalice Circles program. You can sign up throughout December. When you join, you commit to attending once a month until the summer. Each group has facilitators and a covenant, they follow the monthly Soul Matters themes and there are activities and questions for you to respond to. If you join one of these groups, you will be invited to share your responses to questions together.

In September, when the Soul Matters theme was “Welcome,” we had questions like these:

  1. Who welcomed you in when you needed it most?
  2. What would you tell someone younger than yourself about welcoming in grief?
  3. Do you know what it’s like to encounter a welcome that requires you to remove parts of yourself to belong? 

In October, when the Soul Matters theme was “Heritage,” we had this activity:

We all have one: a favorite family memento that holds something important about our family heritage and history. Most of the time, these mementos also keep us grounded in a value or offer us comfort or inspiration when we need it most.

So this month reflect on one of your favorite family mementos and figure out why it has such a hold on you? If possible, bring that memento with you to show to your group.

Each month, you’ll receive an activity and a handful of questions to consider – all based around the Soul Matters theme. Let me try something a little different. Instead of just posing these questions rhetorically, I’ll ask one, invite you to think a moment, and then – if you want – to turn to a neighbor to respond briefly. You are always free to pass.

In many ways, the process of our Chalice Circles involves deep listening. You spend some time thinking about what you will say in your own response, but then you spend a lot of time listening to other people’s responses. Deep listening is a key ingredient to the process. So here is this morning’s big question:

Who first offered you the gift of deep listening?

Take a moment in silence with that question: Who first offered you the gift of deep listening?

…        ~15 seconds

And if you would like, I invite you to turn to a neighbor. You can always pass – participation is never required (wave hand, to signal refusal) but always encouraged. If you would like, turn to a neighbor and take about a minute to share your response and listen their response. I’ll ring the bowl to call your attention back to the full group.

…        ~90 seconds

Rev. Scott Tayler, the lead organizer of Soul Matters, has said the model they offer for small group discussion is a discernment model. In the circle, we use a twice-around process. The first time around, you respond to your question and listen to others as they respond. There is no cross-talk or conversation.

The second time around, there can be some back and forth. We do ‘gratitudes and connections.’ It is a time to say “I really connected with what you shared because I had a similar experience,” or “I appreciate what you said because I’d never thought of it like that before,” or something else along those lines – gratitudes and connections.

It is in this second time around that we build the relationships of the group. The first time around is for your discernment and your listening. It is a powerful experience to know yourself and to be known by others.

Once a month, your group will gather. The facilitators will have shared material ahead for you to think about, they will light a candle and share opening words. You’ll have a brief check-in together: What is one thing weighing on your spirit today and one thing lifting your spirit? Then you’ll do the ‘twice-around’ process with the activity, I used the example of the Family Memento exercise. After that you’ll do the ‘twice around’ process again with the questions. From there, you close with a time for ‘likes and wishes’ and a final reading.

There is a formula, a noticeable structure to the process. “One must observe the proper rites.” The fox tells the little prince. The structure of the Chalice Circles time shapes the space for a level of sharing. In the fox’s language, it is designed to tame us. Perhaps better to say, it is to establish the ties so that we are not strangers to each other. Our Chalice Circles are a way to strengthen the heart of our community through meaning-making and simple friendships.

We are social creatures. We need each other to be fully ourselves. There is still a place and a need for us to embrace the wilder side of ourselves – to howl at the moon or get angry about injustices. We will need to be wild from time to time. And we need the balance of enough gentleness and friendliness as well – to take part in the creating of important things like community.

It is important for our balanced wellbeing to have connections with other people, to have ties with groups that nourish us and lead us deeper into ourselves in the service of that which is greater than ourselves.

Come, let us build this congregation together, that we may all thrive.

In a world without end,

May it be so.