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Henry Whitney Bellows was born in 1814 in Boston, Massachusetts. Little Henry grew up in a nation reeling with its newfound sense of power and its wealth of untamed resources, but also with its political and economic uncertainties and its imperfect Constitution which said all men were created equal and then left one-sixth of its population enslaved and one-half of its population without gender equity.

Henry was raised Unitarian in a city where on Sunday mornings he could hear the sermons of William Ellery Channing wafting from the Federal Street Church, and young Henry soon heard the call to the ministry himself. After graduation from Harvard College and Divinity School, he was ordained a Unitarian minister in 1837. His first pastorate took him far from home, down to the Gulf coast in the soon-to-be Confederate South, to Mobile, Alabama, where he would encounter sights and sounds that would cause the tension to build within him and drive him to want to share the blessings of faith and freedom with all Americans.

The Rev. Bellows returned to the North and a long and successful ministry at All Souls Church in New York City. He was an accomplished orator, an engaging teacher, and had boundless energy for organizational work and theological study. He wasn't sure, but he had a sense that institutions could do more and provide more for the masses of people than individuals alone could and, when the War Between the States finally came, he applied this principle on a national scale.

He founded the United States Sanitary Commission, what we would call today a bureaucracy, that acquired and moved tons of provisions and medical supplies to the front lines of the fighting. The efforts of the Commission saved countless lives and made possible many medical advances on the field of battle, as well as making the everyday lives of the common soldier a little more bearable.

Bellows knew he couldn't have done all this by himself or on a small scale. He needed a national movement, thousands of people across America to work with him to make good things happen. He did not keep his blessings gathered closely around himself, but set up a huge organization to share them as widely as possible.

His experiences during the war led him in 1865 to form the National Conference of the American Unitarian Association. The AUA at the time was an organization of individual Unitarians; Bellows insisted that the new National Conference be a gathering of churches, a new way of relating congregation to congregation rather than individual to individual. He saw this broadening of relationship as the way to ensure that the blessings of liberal faith and religious freedom could be shared with all his countrymen and -women. The National Conference was to change the face of American Unitarianism by providing an institutional grounding for religious liberalism and religious freedom.

You see, Bellows didn't care what people did for a living. He wanted to build places where people could talk about what they ached for, where they could dare to dream. He wanted people to be able to see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and to sense as the source of their life God's presence. He wasn't interested in where people lived or how much money they had. He wanted to help people get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done - for the children. He wanted to help people live with failure, their own and others, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!" And all this on a national scale.

Were there tensions? Of course there were. Any time you put two Unitarians in a room, there are at least three opinions. And Bellows' ideas had their detractors. The strongest voice belonged to the man with the most interesting name - Octavius Brooks Frothingham - I think that's the best name in our UU history books. Frothingham led a group known as the Radicals, folks who were always suspicious of organization, institutionalism, and the slippery slope of creeping creedalism. Frothingham was instrumental in the founding of the Free Religious Association whose loose makeup was set against the stricter organization of the National Conference. The Free Religionists pushed at the boundaries of the National Conference trying to open it up to more modernist, even post-Christian forms and symbols, and actually were the advance guard, in the 1860's, of many 20th century Unitarian (and Unitarian Universalist) innovations.

The tensions between the Free Religious Association and the National Conference are tensions between individualism and institutionalism. They are the tensions between Emerson's "church of one" and Bellow's big tent denomination. They are the tensions between every individual UU church and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

This church, Eliot Unitarian Chapel, is named after one of the great Western missionaries of the Unitarian movement, William Greenleaf Eliot - himself, like Bellows, certainly an institutionalist. But this church has generally followed the traditions of the Free Religious Association, often setting itself against the institutionalism of the UUA. We Free Religionists are without creeds and sometimes suppose ourselves to be without limits, without the need for organizational relationships with others, in the end totally free.

But in the end, we stand in a stream of light and tradition that has been handed down to us by two centuries of Americans and many centuries of others who believed that faith and freedom are not mutually exclusive. In the end, we Free Religionists ignore that stream at our peril. In the end, we lose our power when we turn our backs on our national institution. In the end, we - and the larger institution - lose power when we stop pushing.

Some two hundred thousand people stand today in this stream of our tradition with us. Some of them do marvelous work on the local, national, even international scene. Many are well aware of the tensions between individual and institution. And they are aware that it's the tension that gives us a voice. It gives us a power. It gives us the ability to reach more hearts and minds than we would if we remained in some theological backwater. And most importantly, it gives those of our neighbors who have not heard a message of faith and freedom a chance to do so.

In some ways, these tensions between individual and institution mirror the tensions I feel in my own spiritual life: the looking inward versus looking outward, the unending navel-gazing versus constantly working for others, wrestling with God on my own or wrestling with some social action project that benefits far more than me alone. A friend of mine gave me a little sign that I displayed in my office in Dallas all year. It says, "Action is not a substitute for prayer. Nor is prayer a substitute for action." He gave me this gift possibly because he knows how prone I am to forget these kinds of simple truths.

In my more lucid moments, I recognize that I need both prayer and action. I recognize that I need both silent aloneness and the blur of the crowd. I recognize that I need to nurture my inner life, but I also need to turn from dwelling only on my inner life and to move into the world of action and begin helping others. In fact, maybe it's the tension between those extremes that gives me strength, that gives me perspective, that gives me the power to do what needs to be done. When I can grip the grounding I get from solitude in my one hand and the energy I get from working with others in the other, then all the muscles in between are strengthened. If I let one side or the other take over, then I've got muscles I'm not using. I've got abilities I'm throwing away. I've got talents I'm not investing.

I think that's a sin and a shame. And I want to be the best I can be, as do - I think - we all.

What tensions are you feeling right now about this worship service? Would you rather the minister not be in a robe? Or is it alright with you? Would you rather sing hymns with the piano or the organ? Does language like 'God,' 'faith,' 'sin' make you bristle more than non-theological language?

There's tension in whatever we choose to do or not do. It's there. We can't get rid of it. We may as well use the power that comes from it.

We need to reclaim our traditions - robes, no robes, pianos, organs, God, faith, grace, peace, love, forgiveness, redemption, because there IS tension in those traditions. Because there is power in those traditions. Because they are our traditions. And because we can reclaim them.

What tension is in your life that you need to recognize, to reclaim, and to embrace? Maybe you need to change jobs. Maybe you or a family member is ill. Maybe you need to change a difficult relationship.

Whatever the source, embrace the tension. Use all your muscles, all your strength, all your gifts. Claim the power. Pray, then act. We all - this church, this denomination, this world - are better off when you do.

Henry Bellows used the tension he felt to build the U.S. Sanitary Commission. He couldn't possibly have known that his organization would become the American Red Cross, an organization that sends workers, money, and relief where the tension is greatest and where disaster has struck. He couldn't possibly have known that his National Conference would become the framework for the Unitarian Universalist Association, an organization that nurtures places where people can talk about what they ache for, where they can dare to dream, where people can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, where they can sense as the source of their life God's presence, where they are supported after nights of grief and despair, where they can do what needs to be done - for the children, and where people can still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"

We can't know what our work together will mean for ourselves or for people in the future. But we embrace the tension, use the power, and keep pushing ahead, with faith that our lives have meaning and purpose, even if we are never sure of it while we are on this earth.

So may it be.

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