Sermons
May 4, 2008 - "Practicing Kindness "
Many years ago I read an essay by the Unitarian minister Rev. Robert Fulghum. If you don’t remember Rev. Fulghum’s name I bet that many of you remember the title of that essay “All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” In that short essay, Fulghum preached a simple and hard lesson. It was his premise that the very same morals, ethics and manners that we teach our youngest children are the morals, ethics and manners that we end up needing to practice our whole lives long. Or, as the other even more simple saying goes “There are three things in life you need to know. Be kind. Be kind. And be kind.”
Here is part of Fulgrum’s essay. “All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday school. These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.…Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together… Think what a better world it would be if all the whole world had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had a basic policy to always put thing back where they found them and to clean up their own mess. And it is still true, no matter how old you are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.” (Fulghum)
This is a great essay, a great sermon, and a great reminder about what it really in the end what we are called to do in life. But you know and I know that being kind, doing kindness, does not come naturally and is very hard to do on any consistent basis. And so all our lives we must practice – practice loving ourselves, practice loving those who we care deeply about and those who we hardly know and those who we consider our enemy.
Being kind and practicing kindness is a hallmark of an ethical and religious life. The Dalai Lama tells us “There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; my philosophy is kindness.” Our reading was one translation of the Buddha’s words on loving kindness or “metta.” In that reading the Buddha taught “even as a mother protects with her life, her child, her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings: radiating kindness over the entire world spreading upwards to the skies, and downwards to the depths; outwards and unbounded, free from hatred and ill-will.” (Metta Sutta) Cherish all beings? Radiate kindness over the entire world? Outwards, unbounded, free from hatred and ill will? This is a Sunday school lesson for all ages and it is very hard to put into practice.
We find this same kind of teaching in the Jewish Scriptures. In the book of Micah, the prophet distills the word of God to the following “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) The Hebrew word for mercy is “chesed” which translates to the doing acts of loving kindness (such as clothing the naked, nursing the sick, comforting those that mourn, burying the dead.) A commentary on this passage notes that we are not only called to be merciful but to love mercy and to do acts of mercy and loving kindness. Micah’s ideal is not the minimum of religion but the maximum. It is what we are called to strive to be and do. This is what we teach our children and what we continue to teach and reinforce in our selves.
In my first semester of seminary the students were selling T shirts as fundraiser for the student center. Remember I told you a couple of weeks ago that I had been listening to the bible on tape as I commuted from Amherst to Newton. I was glad that I did because when I read the back of the T shirt I recognized that same passage from Micah “What does the Lord require of you?” So then and now, I had to decide, can I really wear a T Shirt with a bible verse on it? Not just any bible verse but a verse that declares that I am required, not invited, but required, to do something. And that something is hard. Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly. Day in, day out. Doing it poorly, most of the time. It was like I got the syllabus for life in one verse.
It is hard, very hard, to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly. We are ego bound earthlings, often fearful and self centered. We find it easier to walk on by, to turn our head away or to run the other direction when we are faced with suffering. The well known Gospel story of the Good Samaritan is a parable that speaks the truth. Mostly most of us walk by.
A few weeks ago Dorrie and I were watching the TV program 20/20. One of the stories the program was reporting on was a study in ethical behavior that was done in a large city in the United States. In the study a young, maybe 7 year old child actor stood alone on a busy sidewalk. The child was instructed to stand there looking lost and lonely and to see what would happen. Later the child was instructed to cry when people passed by and finally the child was told to ask for help. The filming crew filmed the child and all the people who either stopped to attend to the child or who walked on by.
And sadly, almost everyone, men, women, all ages, all races, walked on by. Even when the child was pleading “Please help me.” 1,700 people were filmed walking by. When some of these people were stopped and asked they said things like “I just didn’t see him.” Or “I didn’t know what to do.” “I had places to go and I thought that someone else would help?” The most common reaction was the first “I just didn’t see him.” In fact the camera filmed young children walking by and pointing the child out to their parents who kept walking. The dogs on leash were filmed sniffing the crying child but the adults did not see him. And if you do not see a crying child you cannot practice an act of simple kindness.
The adults who did intervene had to work hard at figuring out what to do when they were confronted with the child. We saw them stop and ask the child what the problem was. They called out to others for help or called the police on their cell phones. They stood at a distance and talked with the child perhaps because they were afraid of being accused of hurting the child. It was not easy for them to be kind, to do an act of kindness and mercy on a busy city street.
I tell you this story because it was shocking and it should have been shocking. But even more than shocking it seemed to me to be very real. Watching the film we had the benefit from seeing the big picture, knowing that this was a set up, watching all the people walking by. If I had been walking down the street in my own moment, rushing to where I had to go, without knowing any of this I am not sure what I would have done. I hope that I would have been kind.
Loving kindness takes practice. It takes practice to even be prepared to do what is required of us and that practice can take many forms. There was a bumper sticker a few years ago that said “Practice random acts of kindness.” While I know the bumper sticker did not say “randomly practice” this phrase suggests that random acts of kindness can really instill an ethic of kindness. Now, a few years after seeing this bumper sticker I wonder how much difference random acts really makes. I think about any other skill I want to learn. Would random practicing make me proficient in playing softball? Could I learn to play the piano if I practiced randomly, whenever the spirit moved me?
I really do believe that in the case of loving kindness, practice does not make perfect. The demand to act justly, love kindness and walk humbly is what we are striving for and most of us will never become perfectly kind. Perhaps because this is such a demanding teaching I believe that kindness, loving kindness, deserves all the consistent practice that we can give.
A spiritual practice is a practice that we undertake to deepen our minds, our hearts and our spirits so that we will be able to act in new ways, more of the time. There are many spiritual practices that help us become kinder, more loving, and more courageous people. Let me share one of them with you.
On of the ways that some Buddhist practitioners cultivate the way of kindness, is by saying the loving kindness metta. The word metta has two meanings – gentle and friend. According to the teacher Sharon Salzburg, metta means gentle because it “is likened to a gently rain that falls upon the earth. The rain does not select and choose ”I’ll rain here, and I’ll avoid that place over there.” Rather it simply falls without discrimination.” This meditation gently reaches out to all beings.
The other meaning “friend” reflects the Buddha’s view that a good friend is someone who is constant in our time of happiness and also in our time of adversity or unhappiness. A friend will not forsake us when we are in trouble nor rejoice in our misfortune.” (Salzburg) The meditation practice is something that once you learn it, will be with you in all situations. And so the practice of metta begins with gently and consistently befriending our own selves, and offering ourselves the wish for happiness, peacefulness, and relief from suffering. The metta practice is all about training your heart and your mind and your spirit to look at yourself, other people and other beings and communicate that they can be loved and love in return. Essentially it trains us in how to be kind.
The loving kindness metta begins with offering love and peace to your own self and then widens to the rest of the world. You sit in quietness and say to yourself. May I be happy. May I be peaceful. May I be free from suffering. Try it. May I be happy. May I be peaceful. May I be free from suffering. This practice trains your mind to be more kind to yourself.
Then, you can think about someone who has been an important person for you in your life – a teacher, a parent, a benefactor, someone whose life has had a positive influence on your own life. Say the metta for them. May you be happy. May you be peaceful. May you be free from suffering. This part of the practice teaches you to be kind, grateful, and gracious to all those who have been caring to you.
And then you turn your focus to someone who you are neutral toward. Maybe the crossing guard or the librarian. Someone you know but have no strong feelings about. This practice helps sensitize you to the stranger, that child standing on the street looking alone. It is a practice that fills you up with love so that when someone asks you for help you will be more likely to see that neutral person and more likely to be kind. So…May you be happy. May you be peaceful. May you be free from suffering.
Now think about someone who you are in disharmony with; someone who is really getting under your skin, who you may not respect or who you are angry with. This part of the practice helps us envision the possibility of being kind, of offering acts of kindness even to those people who we despise. May you be happy. May you be peaceful. May you be free from suffering.
And finally, think about the whole world, as much as we can imagine the whole world. And send this message of loving kindness. May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free from suffering.
You can do this practice when you are going to bed at night or waking in the morning. You can do it while you are sitting in your car waiting to fill up for gas or standing in line at the supermarket. The practice is a way of consistently, not randomly, reminding us that the world is filled with beings who are worthy of our love and attention and kindness. And it is the intention of this practice that we will not only feel more kindly to the rest of the world but that we will find within ourselves the strength to do something to alleviate suffering.
Sometimes the hardest person to imagine in this way is you. It can be much easier to reach out to strangers, or reach out to our loved ones than to be kind to ourselves. If this is the case you may find that the practice of cultivating kindness strengthens you when you are feeling alone or undeserving of simple kindness. In our responsive reading Ralph Waldo Emerson said “We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. The whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether.” (Emerson) The loving kindness metta is a practice in cultivating the awareness of this element of love so that when we are called to be kind, we will not turn away.
May I be happy, may I be peaceful, and may I be free from suffering. May you be happy, may you be peaceful, may you be free from suffering. May all beings be happy, may all beings be peaceful, and may all beings be free from suffering. I think that Robert Fulghum would be happy to add it to his kindergarten lesson. It all comes down to be kind, be kind, and be kind.
March 23, 2008 "Stop, Look, Celebrate "
And so we sing, on this Easter Day, an old song that rings a truth we strain to hear. “ Soar we now where Christ has led, living out the words he said, made like him, like him we rise, ours the cross, the grave, the skies. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.”
Made like him, like him we rise. Ours the cross, the grave, the skies. The Easter story on first reading seems to be a fantastic, even supernatural story, out of touch with our present day rational society. But taken on another level completely the story of Easter is a very human and very current story. We are made like him and like him we rise. Easter is one of many stories across the ages that teach us that we are all born and die into the inescapable reality that our world is laced with suffering and saved by love. Today, on Easter, we are celebrating the story of Jesus and how this story can point us toward a saving reality. Love conquers death.
Last week we celebrated the fact that in New England we were on, and are now over, the precipice of spring. We asked ourselves, are we frozen, locked in and if we are, what helps us break out so that we can be free to celebrate change, even when that change is sudden and radical. And so today, that same question haunts us with another story. Not the story of melting ice flows, but still again, a story of how we can break out of our tombs and live more fully.
Our responsive reading said “In the tomb of the soul, we take refuge from the world and its heaviness…sometimes it is a comfort, sometimes it is an escape, sometimes this tomb-life gives us time to feel the pain of the world and to reach out to heal others…sometimes it numbs us an locks us up with our own concerns.”[Campbell] But, as another writer reminds us “A tomb is no place to stay.” [Gilbert]
Just as we understand the Vernal Equinox to be a lesson from the earth that we can take and transform into a lesson for our human struggles, today we are taking a lesson from the Christian scriptures. We do and do not read the earth story literally. Ice does not literally cover us humans, forcing us to break out of its grip. And yet the changing of the season teaches us about our changing hearts. So too, the scripture stories can be read not literally but still deeply, read for the truths buried in the words. Reading or listening to scripture can move us to another level of understanding of our own lives, our own struggles, our own questions. Today, on Easter morning, I invite you to put aside your skeptical mind and step into the stories about the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. Listen to how his first disciples grappled with the loss of their teacher. Perhaps this story will shed light on your life today.
A tomb is no place to stay. Or as the angels in the Gospel of Luke say “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” It is no surprise, for those who have followed the story of Jesus to see, that even his closest disciples, women and the men, did not get it. They have been constantly surprised, amazed, and often disappointed by their teacher. They expected him to be something that is familiar, something, someone, that they will recognize and almost always they were wrong. Jesus frequently asks them “Who do people say that I am?” So, here, 3 days after he has died on the cross, they are again surprised and confused. In their great love for Jesus, they come looking for him, intending to personally care for his broken body, to embalm him in spices. But instead they found an empty tomb.
The angel tells them the story that Jesus has been telling them with his whole life, his whole ministry, the story that they did not want to hear. “Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise?... And they remembered his words….and Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them told this to the apostles, but the words seemed to them to be an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” Again, the disciples, the students of Jesus, did not believe that it was his lot, to live a life of joy and of suffering, and to die, in order to return to them. This is the lot of their lives as well.
Jesus taught many things in his life, and one of the things he taught, that we celebrate today, on Easter Sunday, is that we must stop, look, face the suffering and injustice around us, and do something to alleviate this suffering. It is in giving ourselves, as he gave himself, that we reduce the pain in the world and bring in new life. As the Buddha spent his life teaching about the reality of suffering and the path through this reality, so did Jesus. But this gift is hard for us to grasp and to integrate. And so the stories need to be told and retold – by angels at the tomb and by us.
In some ways, the story of Easter is a memorial service. Maybe it seems that way to me because I am not only your parish minister but I am also a hospice chaplain. I spend much of my week sitting with the dying and their families, trying to make sense of life and death. I am privileged to hear stories of the living and of the dead that bring laughter and tears and that somehow, make it all bearable.
This week I sat with a 54 year old woman and her sister, younger by just a few years. Angela, is dying from lung cancer and liver disease. Her skin is yellow, she is thin but her belly is swollen with tumors. And yet when I ask the sisters about their relationship, their love, because it is so palpable in the room, Angela tells me that her love for her younger sister Joan, is exquisite – it is more than she can explain. The sisters tell me that one day, when they were living in different states, missing each other and knowing that the ending was upon them because Angela was getting sicker and sicker, Angela told her sister “Look out at the night sky. Look up. Do you see that bright star? We are looking at the same star. We are together. We will always be together.” Later Joan told me that Angela had a vision recently in which she was in this same night sky, faced with a Cosmic God and she was invited to sign her heart, her life and her death over to God. And she did, with great joy in her heart. She told Anne this vision because she wanted to share her life and her death with her sister and to comfort her, in the way that she too had been comforted. Perhaps her vision was inspired by such a verse as our opening words from the prophet Isaiah “Sing, O Heavens, and be joyful, O Earth; and break forth into singing, O mountains; for God hath comforted the people.”
We are invited all are lives, while our loved ones are living and when they have died, to gather, to remember, to tell their stories. By participating in this ritual we take the stories into our being and then we and they live again. I believe that this is one gift that holy scriptures give us and it is the same gift that our holy lives give us – the opportunity to face our joys and suffering, to tell, re-tell, and when inspired, to make a difference in the days that we have left to live. But usually, we are too busy, too distracted, or too ignorant about what is really in front of us.
In the Gospel of Luke we read about one of the resurrection stories. Each Gospel writer tells different stories, just as at a memorial service each grieving person will bring forth a different story, a different version of the dead. Luke follows the story of the disbelieved women with the story of the two disciples walking the 7 miles from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus. I love this story because I can easily imagine being one of these men, walking, talking, grieving. A dusty road and a long way to go.
And then a stranger appears, walking beside them, and, once again, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” And the Gospel writer tells us “they stood still, looking sad.” They are astonished that this stranger does not know the teacher that they are talking about and they tell him about Jesus, his life and death and how disappointed they were. “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” And Jesus brings them back to earlier stories, to the Jewish prophets who had said that the Christ, the anointed one, would have to suffer these things in order to enter into his Glory.
And when they arrived at the village of Emmaus, still not recognizing their teacher, still not understanding the teachings of suffering and alleviating suffering through love, Jesus woke them from their ignorance by enacting their familiar ritual. He “took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight.” Gone again.
This ritual; take, break, bless, share, eat, drink [Robinson] – this was the way that Jesus had taught his students to remember him. He had lived his life fully, had loved them fully. He had alleviated the suffering of the blind and the deaf, the sorrowful and the poor in spirit. He had experienced great joys and great sorrow in his short life and he died but was and is not forgotten. And so this is a way that today on Easter Sunday, we also remember him and his teachings. Take the life you are given, that you are born into. Break into this life, as all our lives are broken by grief, by mistakes, by disappointment, by disillusionment, by challenge to our world view. Bless this life – recognizing it, honoring it, celebrating its Glory. Share, eat, drink – live fully, in relationship with yourself, with your loved ones, with your communities, and with the Spirit of Life and Love that empowers you, saves you, directs you, and helps you to remember what is most important.
Just as the disciples forgot, or never really got, the message of Jesus, we too forget and have trouble believing this message. We have trouble believing that our lives are gifts and we are called to share the joys and the sorrow and in doing so, remember that they and we are holy. “Soar we now where Christ has led, living out the words he said, made like him, like him we rise, ours the cross, the grave, the sky.”
We have the opportunity every day to push away the stone, to step out into the light of life and to celebrate the day. This Easter morning I would have us stop, look, and celebrate this gift of life and all the teachings from every source that inspire us to return to our better selves. These are redeeming, or saving messages. Take. Break. Bless, Share. This we can do this we must do.
Sources
Luke 24
Hymn #268 Jesus Christ Is Risen Today
Responsive Reading #628 Rolling Away The Stone – Sara Moores Campbell
A Tomb is no Place to Stay: An Easter Meditation – Richard Gilbert
Reverend Ron Robinson (email posting “Take, Break, Bless…)
January 20, 2008 - "An Extremist for Love "
We, a gentle, angry, gay and straight, many colored people are singing for our lives because, in the words of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. whose birthday we celebrate today, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What affects one directly affects all indirectly.” And so when we sing for the rights of any one of us we are singing for, standing for, and working for equality of rights for everyone.
But that singing is not easy and does not come without great cost. For Martin Luther King, the cost was his life. He knew that the road that he was traveling on was a road that would put him in opposition to those in power. He knew that taking this road of justice making would mean that he would not see the freedom that he was leading his people toward. We do not know all that was in his heart and his mind in those years as he and so many other brave men and women walked the freedom road. We can only imagine their fear, doubts, and faith as they relentlessly put themselves on the line. We are left with inspirational words, and acts of love, that even today, can inspire us, direct us, and guide our steps.
And we do all need guidance. All of us need guidance to navigate our way through life. Just this week I sat with a gentleman who talked with me about his faith and his struggles in life. Both his father and his wife’s mother had died over the holidays. He and his wife were planning memorial services for both of the elders and this loss had hit him hard. He told me that he was talking with his sister about his Unitarian Universalist church and the strength that his faith gave him and his wife in this time and in other hard times. His sister who knows that he is an atheist asked “What does an atheist need a church for?” And his response was “Even atheists, and maybe atheists more than some other folks, need guidance. I need religious, moral guidance, to get through life.”
Reverend King drew on the Christian and Jewish Scriptures for his guidance. He also drew on his lived experience as a freedom fighter watching other people “carve” a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment”. When I listen to this phrase, “carving a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment” I imagine the dangerous work of miners, digging their way through what appears to be impenetrable rock, risking their lives to get through to the other side.
King knew that much of life is a dark mountain of disappointment. Life offers challenge after challenge and the rewards appear to be few and far between. Our lives, at least at some times, are hard roads to follow. We do not know what to do to make a difference, for ourselves, our neighbors, our nations. Yet we know that we are caught in this network of mutuality, that we are not alone in this mountain of disappointment. And when a light shines ahead, a light like the life and deeds and words of Rev. King, we take hope. We believe for a moment, that there is a way for us also to make even a small but significant difference in alleviating the suffering of others. We believe for a moment, that there is a way for us to break through the barriers between us and that keep some of us trapped in that mountain of disappointment, of despair.
Reverend King wrote his letter from the jail in Birmingham Alabama. He wrote this letter, from which our reading and our responsive reading today were only a small part, on scraps of paper and on the margins of a newspaper. In jail, the epitome of a mountain of disappointment, he carved a tunnel of hope and sent it out to the future.
This letter was written to his fellow clergy from Alabama who had printed a statement basically disavowing them from King and the other non-violent civil rights activists who had been arrested for marching for freedom. They had called these acts unwise, imprudent, rash, illegal, immoral and extremist. And King, who was taught to preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper, or life itself, in the other hand, scribbled his response.
In his response he spoke of the reasons that he was part of this struggle for freedom, his understanding of just and unjust laws, his commitment to non-violent direct action and his sorrow that the mainly white middle class faith communities had not stepped forward to aid in this struggle. He talked about the idea that some of us have (for we, for the most part, are that very class of people that King was disappointed in) an idea that there is a time and place for everything and that it is better for the most part to wait for a better time, a more convenient time, a safer time, to stand up against injustice or to risk going out of our way to help someone in need.
King disagreed about this idea of time. In his letter he said “There is a strange rational notion that… there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively….We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people…. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that time is always ripe to do right.”
Time is always ripe to do right. And opportunities to do right, are always with us. As Jesus said “the poor are always with you.” Poor of spirit, poor of body, poor of mind. This is always the time to do what is right to alleviate suffering and injustice in our world. And the ways that we do that are as abundant as are the kinds of suffering of injustice.
The danger of celebrating the birthday of such a remarkable man as Rev. Martin Luther King is that we can be deluded into thinking that making a difference is only for the eloquent, public speaking, crowd gathering heroes and heroines of our time. In fact, this has been a problem. The focus on Reverend King has sometimes overshadowed even the other brave civil rights workers. Just as the Montgomery Bus boycott is remembered as being started by Rosa Parks the work for that strike had been laid for years by other local people who had sat down on busses and lunch counters and who had given their lives for the struggle for civil rights. The danger of celebrating our martyrs is that we might let ourselves believe that it is just they and not we, the ordinary people who should be making a difference in this world.
But Reverend King says otherwise. In our reading today he says that all of us are making a difference, for bad or for good, all the time. He says that even in our silence, we are making a difference for the bad; because we are pulling history into another direction by our refusal to try to do what is right.
While King was in jail the local ministers had written their statement condemning the work of the civil rights activists. They had called King and his supporters “extremists.” In 1963, when this letter was published, the work “extremist” rang with the same condemnation as it does today. Then, and today, we are taught to be fearful of those who are extremely passionate, extremely active, extremely anything. Then, and now, we are encouraged to stay to the middle and to not get overly involved. And so when the local ministers called Dr. King an extremist he was at first taken aback. He had to think, had he gone “too far” to one side or another? Had he gone “too soon” to be prudent? Had he overreached into what should have waited for another time, another place, another person, to step in? Had he and his supporters really been “extreme?”
And he came to the conclusion that the ministers were right. He and all the rest of the non-violent protesters were extreme and that he had been guided his whole life by extremists and that all of us, whether we act or not, are extremists for something. The question is; what kind of extremists will we be? By our action or non-action what will we lend our support to? “Will we be extremists for hate or for love?
In these words Martin Luther King revealed that we are all connected and that it is not just the well known hero and heroines or the villains in life that are responsible for bringing in the good and the bad. We are all called to acts of extreme love and justice. And so, on this celebration of Martin Luther Kings’ birthday I ask you to consider, what kind of an extremist are you? And what kind of extremism lives on in this church? Down the road of history, when people look back and ponder the legacy of First Parish Northfield how will they judge us, how will they answer the question– Who were they? What were they extremely passionate about and dedicated to?
When I think of people that I consider being extremists for love and justice I think first about a couple who live in my neighborhood. Orchard Valley in Amherst reminds me in some ways of the down town of Northfield. The houses are different – no Victorians, mainly ranches and colonials, but the sense of safety and quiet and community are the same. When you walk through my neighborhood you can feel like you are walking back in time. Someone told me about their decision to move to Northfield “to have a place where you can walk between the church and the store and the school and everyone knows everyone.” My neighborhood has some of that appeal. Now, the down side of that appeal is that it can be easy to be complacent, to keep within our town and neighborhood and isolate ourselves. And so when I see in my comfortable neighborhood acts of extreme love I take heart and guidance.
This couple, two white women of modest means, have, over the past many years, adopted 5 children from India. These women are extreme in their love because they brought these children, the oldest now being 22 and the youngest in preschool, one by one, into the family and our neighborhood. Some of the children had heart defects and all were hungry, sick and needy. These women are very extreme. They realized that most of the children were starving for love and fearful of being abandoned. So for years and I mean years, the mothers arranged their work schedules so that one was home all the time. They also did not put those babies down. They did not use strollers but instead carried the youngest, newly arrived children on their hip, for as long as they needed to be held. I remember one of the kids being carried into the toddler years. And yes, the adults were tired. And no, they did not get to get for pleasure walks until the oldest ones could watch the youngest after they were put to bed. I still see the mothers, walking in the dark of the neighborhood. And yes, all these children thrived and are solid, capable, confident youngsters. Extremists for love? Definitely.
Being an extremist for love and for justice means stepping outside your comfort zone and stretching. It means showing and interest and compassionate concern for someone or something that is not easy to love, and not easy to defend. It changes your life. I think about another friend of mine whose son is jail. He has been waiting for trial for the past two years for a violent crime. As you can imagine, his mother is torn inside. She is living most of the time smack in the middle of that dark mountain of disappointment. But she too, as lost and in despair as she is, is for me, an extremist for love because she has not given up on her son. It would be easier, and who could fault her, if she quit driving the many miles to visit him in that inhuman, too public, too crowded waiting room of the jail. It would be easier, and who could fault her, if she turned completely inward and away from connection with this son who she fears will be living the rest of her life at least in prison. And yet she does not. She writes, visits, calls, talks to and about him, even when crying. Extremist for love? Definitely.
These are ordinary people. Too often we think that it is only the extraordinary people who are called to acts of extreme love and justice. But no, it is us, caught in the inescapable network of mutuality, which are called to keep our hearts open and risk being hurt, risk giving our lives over to something bigger than our fearful self. It is us that Martin Luther King calls to when he says “Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”
Let us take his letter with us. May it goad us into action if we are fearful. And may it break through the disappointment in our lives to show us that the time is ripe to do right. I know that in your homes and in this congregation there are extreme acts of love and justice being done every day. While we need to guard against the compelling desire to be silent, we can and do, speak out, act out, stand out, sing out for our lives. May we be an inspiration and guidance for each other, our children and our children’s children.
Source:
Letter from the Birmingham Jail by Rev.Martin Luther King Jr.
November 18, 2007 - "Guests at Your Table"
“What is the knocking, what is the knocking at the door in the night? It is somebody wants to do us harm. No, no it is the 3 strange angels – admit them, admit them- admit them.”
D. H. Lawrence, better known perhaps for his novels than his poetry, wrote this line in a poem he titled Song of a Man Who Has Come Through. In this poem and in our service today, we hear the echoes of the Oh so human dilemma. How can we overcome, or “come through” our fear of the stranger, the knocking at our door. We are a people who have been trained to assume that somebody wants to do us harm. How can we risk opening the door to admit, to let into our minds and our hearts our churches and our homes, another being? How can we admit guests to our table? And how can we risk being the guest ourselves?
Thanksgiving is a United States and Canadian holiday. It is the one day that we are invited as a nation to pause, to gather, celebrate all that we have been given, and give thanks for those whose lives have touched our own. Over the years we have re-learned the history of the first Thanksgiving that many of us were taught as children. We have re-learned that the story of the Pilgrims and the Native Americans, gathering to eat together in the early settlement of Plymouth, was not as pure and joyful and egalitarian as we have been taught. We have re-learned that this gathering and other such gatherings happened in the context of starvation, exploitation and oppression. And yet it is also likely that there were such moments in which all parties paused and gave thanks and risked sitting down together, treating each other as guests in their world. I believe that this is true because this is what continues to happen today. We gather with loved ones and strangers even when we might be wary of each other.
I grew up in a large family, in a town that had many borders that most people did not cross. The borders were family ones, religious ones, political ones, and ethnic and racial ones. I imagine that you know something about those borders. One way that I experienced living in a “bordered town” was that my family celebrated our Thanksgiving and other holidays alone. Alone we were already a brood of 8 children, a grandmother, aunts and uncles and cousins. Alone we were already a group of people who loved each other but were also strangers, because who knows better than family, that there is much untold between family members. As I look back on those days in Chicopee I know that it was just too much to envision the idea of welcoming in a complete stranger into our celebrations. We were a closed unit and as the years have gone on I have struggled myself with how to open my heart to welcoming guests to my own table.
Luckily for me I have married a woman who cannot imagine having a Thanksgiving or any other holiday meal without inviting in someone, or some ones, who might otherwise be alone on those days. Dorrie tells me that this understanding of hospitality in her own heart began in her own family upbringing. She remembers two women who came to most every holiday gathering in her family even before Dorrie and her twin sister were born. Elma and Irma were both mothers who had lost a child at an early age. They were both divorced, perhaps because their relationships could not survive the grief that the loss of a child carries. Both Elma and Irma, independently from each other began to reach out to the busy household of Dorries’ family and they were both welcomed in; cooking, cleaning, visiting, and celebrating. And then tragedy struck Dorrie’s family and they too lost a young son to an accident. Alma and Irma continued to come to the home for holidays for years and their presence was a gift to this newly bereaved family. They first came to Thanksgiving out of their own loneliness and grief and they stayed because they were needed; needed to demonstrate that a person, a family, could go on.
And so Dorrie brings to me an acute awareness that all parties, guests and hosts, have something important to give and to receive. This increased sensitivity has helped me jump the borders that I had created as a child and now, every holiday, our family in Amherst grows. This year we will be inviting some of our guests to come early, to set up the dinner at our house, while Dorrie and I and a couple of friends come to Northfield to set up and serve our Community Dinner. And when we get back home, who knows who and what will be waiting for us at our family table!
One way our Unitarian Universalist Association helps us as a church to welcome guests to our table is by distributing the collection boxes and stories of hope that we passed out to all of you today. The materials come from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and the money that you collect between now and the 1st of the New Year will be sent back to the Service Committee to fund programs for people in need all around the world. The idea is that each time you sit down with your family you are invited to reflect on your own life and the lives of these strangers whose face you might only know from a cardboard box. You are invited to fill the box with change and dollars, a little bit at every meal and in doing so, contribute to the larger pie of giving and receiving.
Do you all know about the UUSC? The service committee was established by the Unitarians in 1940 as a response to the takeover of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany. There was a need for both rescue and relief for children and adults who were headed for extermination. This new Unitarian Service Committee and the Universalist Service Committee worked together to run shelters for children and to help people escape the war torn countries for safety abroad. The Flaming Chalice, which is now seen as the symbol of our UU faith was first designed to be a symbol for the service committee because it was common to leave a flame in the window of a home where rescue was needed. The flame that we associate with our faith then and now symbolized freedom – freedom of religion and freedom to live.
And so the Guests at Your Table boxes continue this legacy. In our time, the UUSC as a relief organization focuses on economic justice, civil liberty, environmental justice and responding to disasters, especially on defending the right of the marginalized and oppressed populations.
Our reading today was one of many “voices of hope” that you are receiving with your collection box. In this trued story, Viola remembers being welcomed into people’s homes after a long journey with no food, no water, and no shelter. She says “we were blessed.” And this blessing, this being welcomed, strengthened her so that she could, in turn, work to help other displaced persons. Our story of hope tells us that “she works every day, so everyone, regardless of color or class, has the right to come home.”
Viola experienced something of what Alma and Irma experienced being a guest of Dorrie’s family. All of them experienced the gift of being invited in from the storm of life and finding themselves less isolated, less lonely. Sometimes being a guest builds up your hope and faith that life can be different, life can go on. By reading the stories of hope and being willing to put our money in the box, we too can participate in the restoration of life. Perhaps we might gather together as a community after the holidays and tell each other some of our own stories of hope, stories of being a guest or a host for someone in need. I know that each of you has such stories to tell.
In a meditation called The Fine Art of the Good Guest Rev. Jeffrey Lockwood says, “We are all visitors, even when we are home. Our time in any relationship or place is ultimately limited. We are passing through; nobody stays forever. How might we act if we consider ourselves guests in the lives of friends and family? The rules of being a good guest of the world are the same. Ask little, accept what is offered, and give thanks.”
“Ask little, accept what is offered, and give thanks.” This is a humbling phrase that reduces us to our essence and reminds us that life and relationship are gifts that we are asked to pass on as we pass through our own lives. In my work as the hospice chaplain I feel this sense of life as a gift every day. I remember meeting one woman who was facing the end of the life due to cancer. She told me that one way that she was coping with this life threatening diagnose was that she thought of herself, and all of us, as “having a shelf life.” She said that the only difference between her and other people is that she is more conscious that this date is looming in her future.
This conversation with her taught me again that all of us are here for a short while. I believe that it is our gift and our responsibility not to horde our blessings but to use ourselves up so that nothing, nothing, is wasted. We use ourselves up by giving ourselves to each other and this world and by investing ourselves in acts of value so that our lives end up benefiting the next generation, and nothing is wasted. We use ourselves up by envisioning ourselves as guests and host all at the same time. I have a shelf life and so do you. How are you choosing to live life to the fullest? How are you treating the guests who come to your table? What is it like for you to be a guest yourself? And finally, can you be a guest at your own table, treating yourself as you might treat the stranger?
The poet Rumi had a vision of this being human as being a guest house, not only to strangers but also to our own feelings, our memories, our dreams and our fears. He reminds us that just as we are called to invite the stranger to our table we also need to practice accepting our own conflicted and very human selves. Sometimes the hardest person to tolerate, never mind celebrate, is our own self. Listen now to Rumi as he shares his vision of the guesthouse within.
This being human is a guest house,
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor,
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture.
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be cleaning you out
For some new delight,
The dark thought, the shame, the malice
Meet them at the door laughing,
And invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent
As a guide from beyond.”
Rumi speaks of guides from beyond. Perhaps they are the same guides that D.H. Lawrence spoke of. “What is the knocking, what is the knocking at the door in the night? It is somebody wants to do us harm. No, no it is the 3 strange angels – admit them, admit them- admit them.” It is my thought that sometimes those angels, those “guides from beyond” are the awareness that we are all limited by our humanity and our mortality. We are limited and also unlimited by the influence we can have in our lives and the lives of others. By welcoming our own internal crowd of sorrows into our consciousness and not running away from our pain, we can build a tolerance and even a love, for the sorrows and the joys that come knocking at our doors.
Viola reached out to others because she not only survived the hurricane but was blessed by the caring of strangers. Alma and Irma, from Dorries’ childhood, reached out to her family because they heard an echo of their own pain and they knew that there was relief in coming together. Consider the Guests at Your Table boxes as gifts, sent to you from beyond, bringing you into relationship with people around the world. We are guests of the world and for this, may we be forever grateful.
Sources
1. D.H Lawrence “Song of the Man Who Came Through”
2. Stories of Hope ; UUSC Guest at Your Table information
3. “The Fine Art of the Good Guest” from A Guest of the World by Jeffrey Lockwood.
4. untitled poem by Rumi in The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks
October 7th , 2007 - "What If The Hokey Pokey Is What It’s All About? "
“Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free, tis a gift to come down where we ought to be, and when we find ourselves in the place just right, twill be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed. To turn, turn, will be our delight, till by turning, turning, we come round right.”1
This hymn, an old Shaker tune, is a gift to us, in this, the age of information, the age of complexity, the age of more rather than less. The Shakers remind us in their hymns and in their life style, that simplicity is a gift and it is a gift that brings with it a certain amount of freedom and a valley of love and delight. Shaker simplicity is displayed in the sparse and beautiful lines of the Shaker furniture, in their work in the gardens and the woodshops, and in their dancing and worship. That gift of simplicity, when gained, lead the Shakers to an experience of reverence – “to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed” And this experience of transcendence, lead them to a change of heart and mind, a conversion. “By turning, turning, we come round right!”
So what about us, what are our gifts? Do the gifts we receive in our community of faith, lead us to freedom, to reverence, and to change? I certainly hope so. Today we are taking time together to celebrate the ministry of this church. You have installed me as your minister, and you have also committed yourselves to collaborating in this ministry. You have boldly declared, that “Love is the spirit of this church and service is its law. This is our great covenant to each other: to dwell together in peace, to seek truth in love and to help each other.”2
This is a simple covenant, not unlike the promises that the Shakers make with each other. This promise is the foundation of the ministry of this church – to bring love into the world and to practice that love through right relationships and service. Simple. Hard. A promise to make, to break, re-make, and celebrate. Simple. Perhaps this is “what it’s all about” – dwell together in peace, seek truth in love, help each other.
When I was a teen there was a popular song. Perhaps some of you here might remember it. It was sung by that wonderful Motown artist Dionne Warwick and the refrain of the song was “What’s it all about Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live?” That refrain spoke volumes to a generation of young people, like every generation of young people, who were desperately searching to find some truth and meaning in our lives. We wanted to know just what was most important and how to live our lives to reflect those Ultimate Meanings. We wanted to know “is this it?”
This is the quest, the journey that all humans, to some extent or another, travel. And many of us, if we are lucky, travel that journey of searching for “what it’s all about” together in a community of faith. Because all though much of this search for truth and meaning is conducted in the most private places in our hearts and souls, it is in community, that we practice what we have learned. As the Shakers, in their community life practiced simple living and prayerful singing and dancing as avenues to a life of spirit, we too practice how to live, in community. We cannot, and do not, do this in isolation.
The 4th principle that our Unitarian Universalist congregations promise to affirm and promote is “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” If you read the preamble to the principles and purposes of our faith (and you can find them in the beginning pages of our hymnal) you will see those small but important words –“we covenant to affirm and promote.” They do not say “we believe.” They say “we affirm and promote.” It is my guess that you cannot really affirm and promote without some strong belief. But the intention of this statement is not that we believe the same things but that that we are called to act together, to do something, to not only affirm, but to promote, this search for truth and meaning, this search for “what it’s all about.”
A few years ago Dorrie and I were taking a driving trip to Vermont. On the trip we were having a good time reading bumper stickers and thinking about what bumper stickers say about the driver of the car. Of course this assumes that if you are driving a used car you have cleaned off the previous owner’s bumper stickers and affixed your own! One of the bumper stickers that caught our interest was “What if the hokey pokey is what it’s all about!” And since that time I have thought off and on about the meaning, if there is one, to that question.
Most of you know that my career previous to ministry was early childhood education. I was a preschool and a special education teacher for about 30 years. This means, that I have danced the Hokey Pokey more times than I can count. Do you know, or remember this song? It goes like this “You put your right hand in, you put your put your right hand out, you put your right hand in and you shake it all about. You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around and that’s what it's all about!” The dance calls you to put each body part into the circle, to take it in and out, to shake it, to twirl yourself in a circle and come round right. Maybe it is a preschool version of Tis a Gift to Be Simple!
In this dance the children all stand in a circle. They are not holding hands because they need their hands and all their concentration for the game. You listen to the call and you respond with your action. You do these silly movements in the group and the bigger the group and the more rapid the calls, the more exciting the game until you finally “put your whole self in and take your whole self out.” Today, these years later, I wonder. Is that what it’s all about? And if it is, or isn’t, what difference does that make in how I live my life?
I read an essay recently about a group of Americans, working as missionaries in Tanzania. They were providing loving care to families, most of whom had at least one family member living with, or who had died from Aids. Tricia, one of the workers taught the children a dance she had learned from the Zulu tribe of South Africa. She says it was a rhythmic dance, first slapping your right hand on your left knee and your left hand on your right elbow and jumping around the circle…. Another person taught the group the Hokey Pokey and they danced with the babies and the elders and everyone else who wanted to join in. The essay writer said “Here we are, having a great time, smiling, laughing, singing, dancing and loving, forgetting for just a short time we are with a mother of six who is dying of aids, children with malaria, worms and tuberculosis and a whole neighborhood of children who have very little to eat.”3
Is the Hokey Pokey what it is all about? You will have your own thoughts about this question, but I think yes and no. Yes it really is all about dancing to oblivion with a group of friends and strangers. And no, life is not just a frivolous game. It is about living our lives connected but taking responsibility for our own actions. It is all about the dance of life that includes laughter and tears, dancing and facing the music of tragedy all around us, and trying, trying, to make a difference. The dancing of the Hokey Pokey in Africa was so joyful not because the group forgot the about the dying mother and the starving children. It was joyful because this group was engaged in that painful reality. Because they were so engaged in the fullness of life they could truly celebrate this moment of freedom, this moment of play.
The rabbi and philosopher Martin Buber believed that we become fully human only when we are affirmed by another, in the intimate dance of life. He says “secretly and bashfully we watch for a yes which allows us to be and which can come to us only from another human being.”4 The dancers in Africa, the Shakers, children and adults across the world and we in this church are secretly and bashfully watching for each other to give us a yes, an affirmation, a go ahead, to be our best selves.
I think this is what it is all about. Or at least it is part of what it is all about. And if you believe this then what difference does it make? Will you be more willing to give each other that yes, that look in the eye that says “I see you and I am with you, trying to be a better human being.” Will you think deeply about how you live out our statement of fellowship, the call for a life of love, truth and service? How will your life change if you take seriously and joyfully your relationships in this, the one life you have been given?
Remember the steps of the Hokey Pokey? You start with putting your right hand in and then your left hand in, your right and left leg, your head and finally your whole self. The Hokey Pokey is a game but it is also practice in living. We know that it takes time and practice and commitment to put our whole self on the line. Putting our whole self in means staying engaged even when we would rather walk away from a situation. It means showing our vulnerability when we might rather hide behind a shield of indifference or anger. It means letting ourselves look foolish by trying things that we are not really good at yet, because the thing needs to be done and we are the one called on to step up and lend a hand.
You know what putting your whole self in means for you. One thing that I know is that you cannot put your whole self in when you are standing on the sidelines and watching. To live in a community of faith requires active participation. What it’s all about, is a life in which we are encouraged to grow more human, more true to ourselves and each other. This means dancing while laughing and crying, holding lightly but with commitment to relationship. The poet Rumi, a Sufi dervish dancer himself, says
“Dance when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of fighting,
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free”5
And so, let us follow this advice. Let us dance together as a church, ministering to each other and our surrounding communities in joyous and painful moments, so that we may all be free. Free to love and free to grow. Today we have installed, or acknowledged, our commitment to the ministry of this church. This is a gift we have given each other. As we leave our service may we say yes, we are ready to do the work that this gift requires of us.
Amen and Blessed Be
- #16 in Singing the Living Tradition hymnal
- #473 Singing the Living Tradition hymnal
- article from Maryknoll Magazine
- from To Hallow This Life
- pg 281 The Essential Rumi
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