Something Like A Star

(SLAS = Something Like a Star, history of Star Island)

S-T-A-R, S-T-A-R, OCEANIC, OCEANIC, RAH, RAH RAH!
YOU DID COME BACK! YOU DID COME B ACK! YOU DID COME BACK!

That’s how you arrive at Star Island, in the Isles of Shoals off the coast of Portsmouth, NH. You sail up in the small, lovely ferry called the Oscar Laighton to the pier, and a crowd of smiling, cheering people shout it at you.

First time I heard that cheer, I was nauseous and had already thrown up twice… (tell story)… What a way to meet your new congregation.

I’d heard about what a special, magical place Star was, and thought, yeah, I’m sure it’s fine, magical, schmagical. I was wrong. It is magical. Powerful. Peaceful. Uplifting. I felt it as soon as I set foot on the pier, self-conscious, spattered, weak and anxious as I was, I felt it and knew I felt it from the first instant. Despite the rugged conditions—only two showers allowed a week, no running water in most rooms, no heat or air-conditioning… the place is blessed and blessing. Living gently upon the earth, in old spaces built or re-built by Unitarians and Universalists with enthusiasm and love and humor...what riches. Don’t we know the sentiment behind these verses ourselves—don’t we have building and people we feel just the same about… (read Vaughn poem, SLAS, p. 252-253.) so I’m a Star Island convert, enthusiast, missionary. I love everything about it, the gulls, the sea, the extraordinary views in every direction, the simplicity of life on the island, the history, the connections, the humanity, the nature...what a smorgasbord of all good things, all for the likes of us, you and me.

Overall, Star can be divided into two categories, the island and the people. A bit about the island first:

Small, rugged, sparse growth, beautiful rocks, outcroppings, small hidden beaches, the sound of surf from every direction. The moon on the sea. The sun going down.

Part of an archipelago—all beautiful islands, including Appledore where the impressionist painter Childe Hassam did so many sparkling, varigated studies of Celia Thaxton’s garden.

Probably the best known of the islands, though, is not Appledore nor even Star but Smuttynose, directly across small, exquisite Gosport harbor from Star. Smuttynose was supposedly named by pirates who hid their treasure there because one end of it looks like a nose with smut or cinders on it—large clumps of seaweed clinging to the rocks there. But that’s not why it’s famous. There was a multiple murder committed on Smuttynose towards the turn of the last century - national event—everyone knew the story - recently the subject of a fictionalized re-framing by the novelist Anita Shreve in her somber, semi-historical novel The Weight of Water. (Tell story) Even now, you can row across Gosport harbor in one of the small dory’s kept for guests and explore the island, the site of the original houses, the rock where Maren said she hid.

The people:
Read The Chapel, from SLAS, p. 7-9

Read SLAS, p. 10-11, then tell about candlelight procession up the hill—still do it all summer—lay services with the candle-lanterns along the walls. Space is charged for me with ghosts already, and I’ve only been there 3 times—ministered to Roland and Anne and Ellen. (Tell who Dana was). Tell about hearing Anne and Ellen talk about coming out to Star as young women during WWII. About being there with them again, watching Ellen sing Goodbye Sweet Day as she always has at the end of a visit to Star, in her lovely voice off the long porch, her lined face vivid with the colors of the sunset.

Leading worship in the mornings—speaking in the beautiful, almost Quaker-like space with people in the pews or sitting on the rocks outside where the sound is piped out. The squeaky old organ—you’ve got to know how to play it or it sounds terrible.

My privilege to lead worship there for a week last summer—now those faces are added to my experience of Star. But sometimes also it’s about unknown ghosts and connections - the United Nations flagpole—noticed it, read the inscription, etc. —then finding Dad in tears outside the gift shop (which has been run by the same women for many decades now)… learning the father had hired my parents as new teachers when he was a principle, struggling to raise a difficult son....

Many sons and daughters have grown up on Star, and when they’re in their late-teens many work on the islands as Pelicans. (Explain Pelicans. Sing Pelican Song, SLAS, p. 249-250.)

Pel song is a version of Star Island anthem - yes, they even have a song for the Star Island experience—read it—p. 248.

Star Island, it’s like a church in time—congregations that meet, bond, leave and return because of those ties that bind that are forged with the island and the shoalers who love it. Anyone who knows what it is to be part of a congregation can understand and join right into, the spirit of Star. Consider this poem on the re-erection of the turnstile in 1968 - we know poems like this that lift up the small victories of a vital group of people with humor and even a sense of history—p. 251–252.

Most Unitarian-Universalists don’t go on retreat at all, even within their own church. And many don’t even know Star Island exists. With all its charms, Star is more than its particulars. And it is more than just another place with a story, even more than just another place that people have loved for generations. It is a retreat in the truest sense of the world, a place outside of the world, a time outside of the daily grind, where you live apart, by a different sense of rules, where the way of life, and the world around you, the sun, the fog, the rocks and sea, the moon on the water, the sun diffused in clouds over the coast, the call of the gulls—they cackle, or shriek, or sob or croon. The earth is all around you, simple, powerful. Some retreat centers are about living differently for an inward view—eating plain food, keeping silence, spending time in chapels or a simple room. Star is about living differently for an outward view—renewing your sense of connectedness to the world itself, to people and nature both, renewed by the grace of the space. It recalls that old Irish blessing:

I place all heaven with its power
And the sun with its brightness
And the snow with its whiteness
And the fire with all the strength it hath
And the lightning with its rapid wrath
And the winds with their swiftness along their path
And the sea with its deepness
And the rocks with their steepness
And the earth with its starkness
All these I place
by God’s almighty help and grace
Between myself and the power of darkness.

Howsoever we conceive the sacred: as God, nature, a transcendent highest something, the good in people, and what stands against the sacred: as evil, as chaos, as uncaring, and ultimate selfishness, as the bad in people, Star Island has the power to stand between us and all that can oppress us. Retreats are, in effect tools, tools that serve the spirit, the soul. Very little can renew us for the world that needs us, in ways that last, whose memory or effect can carry us beyond a day or a week. But a retreat, with space and time enough for you, can. Consider feeding your soul with the sustenance of a Unitarian Universalist treasure. And if you don’t feed your soul thus, feed it somehow. We need strong souls right now; we need to be strong for each other and the world. When our selves are not enough, the world can give us its wonders to renew us: water, sky, green, blue, sun, moon, a star.

Amen.