We begin with science this morning and a famous experiment by Stanford psychology professor Walter Mischel, on the topic of delayed gratification. Specifically: when does the capacity to delay gratification develop in children? That was the question. Children aged four to six were led into a room empty of distractions, they were seated at a table, and right before each of them was plopped a plate carrying a delectable delicious scrumptious mouth-watering treat: a marshmallow. They were told that they could eat it right then and there, but if they waited just 15 minutes, they could double the delectable deliciousness and have TWO scrumptious mouth-watering marshmallows. 

But they had to stay in the chair and wait. 

Here began the dance of delayed gratification. Of the 600 four-to-six year olds who took part in the experiment, some didn’t even attempt the dance; they gobbled up the marshmallow immediately. But most of the kids did make the attempt; they didattempt that awkward delayed gratification dance. There’s video of it. Watching it you’ll see: one kid lifted the marshmallow up to his nose and he gave it a deep smell that a wine expert would envy, then he put it back down, held his head in his hand like he had a headache, and he looked so sorrowful. Another kid turned away his head, but his hand “accidentally” collided with his marshmallow and he gave it a hopeful squeeze. Quite a few of the children averted their eyes and succeeded in keeping their hands off, but it wasn’t easy. Frustration was bubbling up inside them. Some soothed it by bobbing their heads, others swayed their bodies back and forth or made click-clacking noises or rubbed their hearts through their chests–anything to regain some calm in the midst of the storm. 

Delaying gratification is not easy! 

But eventually the researcher returned to the room, and for those kids who were able to hold out for the full 15 minutes—oh happy day! They got double marshmallows! It was bliss! One of the kids in the video took both of the marshmallows and stuffed them simultaneously in his mouth and looked like a deranged chipmunk. 

Now look at what I have here: 

[unveil the giant marshmallows]

I’m just looking for two taste testers to come up here and verify that a marshmallow might just be tasty enough to delay gratification for. Anyone willing to be a taste tester this morning? 

[…]

Delectable! Delicious! Scrumptious! Mouth-watering! 

Heaven! 

In the over 600 kids who took part in the experiment, one-third deferred gratification long enough to get the second marshmallow. Age was the major determinant. The older the kid, the more control they had. 

But what’s truly fascinating about this experiment was what follow-up studies showed. Children who were able to defer gratification for the full 15 minutes tended, later on in life, to have better SAT scores and healthier lifestyles. They generally grew up to be better adjusted, more popular, adventurous, and confident. This is in distinct contrast to what follow-up studies showed for the children who weren’t able to delay gratification. Later in life, these kids tended to be less successful, more easily frustrated, and more lonely…. 

The message is clear: a capacity to delay gratification in pursuit of a larger good has all sorts of positive health and happiness omplications, and so anytime children (and people of all ages) are helped to develop this capacity, we can consider that help to be an act of real love. 

Which brings us to our service today: our annual ingathering service, when we formally begin a new program year. You may have noticed these past several years that, during the annual ingathering service, we’ve been careful to reintroduce some aspects of ourselves. The story behind our Unitarian Universalist chalice is retold. We are reminded that we are a community of care and that we have a fantastic Pastoral Care ministry which is available for you, as you need. We are reminded that we are a people of the lifelong spiritual journey, of all ages and generations, and this was affirmed in the RE video we saw a moment ago. And, once again, we celebrate our annual Water Communion, which is a way to restate and reaffirm our spiritual intentions as a church and as individual participants of this church. 

All these annual reintroductions and reminders are to make sure that both old-timers and newcomers are on the same page, in some essential ways. 

And now comes an additional thing to be reintroduced to and to be reminded of: that this congregation is a covenant-centered faith community. Unitarian Universalist communities are covenant-centered, by definition. Without covenant-centeredness, our diversity becomes impossible to sustain in healthy ways. The quote painted on the wall of Baker Hall (which is where we usually enjoy coffee hour) expresses the essence of covenant-centeredness: “We need not think alike to love alike.” In other words: if we learn to treat each other with mutual respect and care, then we can flourish in our differences.

You know, “loving alike” isn’t that very different from delaying gratification. Differences and disagreements can tend to spark irritation or suspicion or anxiety, and if we allow ourselves to get instantly caught up in that and to behave reactively from that, the result will be hurtful behavior. “Loving alike” means pausing in the moment, in the midst of whatever emotional weather is boiling away inside us–taking a deep breath to get a bit of perspective–and then responding in more positive and constructive ways.  

Did you get that analogy? How emotional weather inside us is analogous to stormy weather outside us? And, just as external storms amp up to extremes like tornadoes and wildfires and they chew up whatever gets in their way, so can internal weather amp up, to the point that the tornadoes and wildfires within demand instant reactivity. But to be covenant-centered is to delay gratifying this in service to the larger good–and it’s in that common good where we, as a community, can enjoy more rather than less marshmallows!

Here at West Shore we have a CARE Covenant, CARE being an acronym for the four essential ways we envision the work of “loving alike”: courtesy, acceptance, respect, and engagement. This covenant originated way back in 2004, when the Rev. Kathleen Rolenz, one of the co-ministers at the time, invited the Board of Trustees to form a Board task force composed of Candace Rich, Mark Holloway, and Joe Schafer to develop guidelines and processes for how we as members wish to relate to each other, including when we are in disagreement. The Board task force, chaired by Candace, developed a preliminary set of behavioral norms and policy guidelines. 

That was almost 20 years ago, and between then and now, our CARE Covenant has been one of those things we dare not forget—one of those things we insist stays in the foreground of our thought. Ingathering is an ideal time to remember this, as well as some of the other basics of our community. As we begin a new program year, we must remember how, if we “love alike” in the midst of all our differences and disagreements and conflicts, well, more marshmallows for us all! 

Right now, look for the insert in your order of service that says CARE Covenant. Let’s read it together. I’ll read the main titles, and you’ll read the bullet points. Ready?

We covenant to CARE for each other by acting with:

Courtesy

• Showing kindness, warmth, and patience.
• Treating others with dignity and sensitivity when in disagreement.

Acceptance

• Affirming the value of physical, life style, perceptual, and religious differences.
• Agreeing to disagree when unable to reach consensus.

Respect

• Actively acknowledging the contributions of others to the life of the church.
• Being quick to listen, slow to judge, and willing to negotiate.

Engagement

• Inviting others to participate in opportunities to serve, grow, and heal.
• Resolving conflict through direct, clear, and sensitive communication.

Now let me ask: does the language of this covenant make you uncomfortable in the way it clearly acknowledges the potential reality of disagreement and conflict in this space? 

Don’t get us wrong: there’s a lot of basic likemindedness in this room, and we really do enjoy each other. We do. It has to be, otherwise this space would feel fundamentally uncomfortable and you are I would remove ourselves as fast as our legs would carry us. However, if we don’t honestly acknowledge some of the basic differences that are also in this room, we’re going to miss out on exactly the kind of thing that makes the Unitarian Universalist spiritual way so powerful and unique: how our diversities of culture and experience and belief meet and mingle to create wonderful new marshmallowy things….

We’re not necessarily alone in this. From the tradition of Judaism comes this story. A Jewish congregation was arguing about the Shema, which is the oldest fixed daily prayer in their religion: Hear, oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. The argument was: what is the true tradition on how we pray this essential prayer of our faith? Does one sit and pray? Or does one stand? When the people of this particular congregation prayed the Shema together, it was a sight to behold. Half of the congregation would stand and the other half shouted at them to sit. The other half, sitting, were shouted at to stand. “Sit down!” “Stand up!” The fighting became so bad that the congregation split in two, each half contending that they knew the true tradition on how to pray the prayer. As a last resort, the congregation’s rabbi decided to visit a one hundred year old member of the synagogue who was living in a nursing home. He took with him a delegation from each of the arguing sides. “Now, tell us,” said the rabbi, “what is our tradition?” “Should we stand during the Shema?” “No,” said the old man. “That is not our tradition.” “Well, then,” said the rabbi, “should we sit during the Shema?” “No,” said the old man, “that is not our tradition.” “But we need to know what to do,” said the rabbi, “because our congregation members are fighting among each other.” “But that,” said the oldest member of the congregation, “that is our tradition.”  

It has been said that peace is not so much an absence of conflict as it is the presence of a kind of love that is large enough to empathize with differing perspectives and points of view. Peace in this sense is like a container holding us together, for the sake of wholeness. 

Love makes diversity a source of aliveness. We’re going to explore love all year long, by the way. Consider yourself invited to join this congregation in its year-long exploration as, once per month, I preach on our common read for the year: All About Love, by scholar, sociologist, feminist, activist, and deep thinker bell hooks. 

For now, and as the last thing I’ll say, a main thing to remember is those children in Stanford psychology professor Walter Mischel’s experiment. Some of those children—especially as they got older–learned ways to cope with the discomfort of delaying gratification. They stopped fixating on the marshmallow with their senses or minds: they looked the other way, they imagined something else, they soothed themselves with certain mannerisms. 

This is very similar to what we must do when our CARE covenant asks us, in the face of disagreement or conflict, to show courtesy, acceptance, respect, and engagement. The essential ingredient is the internal skill of disidentifying from the emotional weather of anger or frustration or anxiety we might be feeling in the moment. I’m not saying deny them. I’m not saying repress them. I’m saying disidentify from them. It’s as if you are holding them in your hand and observing them. The anger that’s swirling there, the frustration that’s burning there, the anxiety that zaps like lightning. You observe all this. You see how it’s a breeding ground for an instant story about what’s happening. You see the instant stories arising. You see how the instant stories make you into the innocent one and the other person or people into the bad guy. You see all this. You are bringing mindfulness to this. But you disidentify: you don’t equate yourself to the emotional weather you are witnessing. You just let the emotional weather work itself out, until the sky of your insides turns calm and clear again. 

This internal emotional covenant-centeredness skill is central to the sustainability of our Unitarian Universalist spiritual way. The skill is in delaying the gratification of all this emotional weather. Your emotions are indeed information and are telling you that you are disturbed. But there must be a way to delay the reflex to strike out at the other who seems to be disturbing you, to bring greater awareness to your experience of what’s happening, and to learn how to tell a different and probably more fair story about what’s happening.

Too many churches are in the business of business. They preach a gospel of financial prosperity and their preachers fly across the country in their Lear jets. But that’s not us, and I drive a Subaru. We are in the business of building spiritual character in people. We are in the business of enabling people to follow the creative way of the unfolding Self (not ego). We are in the business of learning how to love. 

May it be the business of this church, in this new program year, to learn love.

The more we do this, the better the news gets: MORE MARSHMALLOWS. 

Or, as is said in Jewish communities as they greet the New Year: L’shana tova! 

May the new year for you be sweet!