“Our hope is not in turning away from the realities of injustice and heartache. It is in facing these things with clarity knowing that we have the resources to make a difference.”
My granddaughter turned 6 months old this week. She, like all children, is a delight to behold. She is close to crawling, she really likes solid food, and loves to be outside. Her fine motor skills are steadily improving and she is good at grasping things in her little hands. Occasionally she will just hold her hands up and look at them, (hold up hands) flexing her fingers and pivoting her wrists, just beholding her own hands with wonder.
I was telling my spouse about the reading we had for this morning from Cole Arthur Riley (from This Here Flesh) in which her father describes an experience he had in a dance class. He makes a particular leap and surprises himself when his body does it. And he says the line: It’s not arrogant to wow yourself every once in a while. It’s not arrogance, it’s just paying attention. (p36) And my granddaughter, as I was describing this scene to my spouse, at that exact moment lifts up one hand (hold up hand) to watch herself flex her fingers and pivot her wrist.
Our opening hymn, “O What a Piece of Work Are We” # 313, is not one we sing much. Nowadays if someone says, “Oh, he’s a real piece of work!” it is not mean as a compliment! That is some shade. But an earlier rendering of that phrase was intended to signal awe. “How marvelously wrought” the hymn says. It is not arrogance to wow yourself every once in a while. It’s just paying attention!
Our bodies are locations of wonder and beauty All the world’s wondrousness is not contained in the birds and waterfalls and the sunlight at dawn. We, too, are locations of awe and amazement if we will but pay attention. Do you? … pay attention? … love your body?
I know loving your own body is fraught in our culture. There is so much shame poured out onto us about our bodies – are they thin enough, curvy enough, soft enough, hard enough? Are they the wrong color, the wrong size, the wrong shape? The shame we are encouraged to have about our bodies is boundless.
James Baldwin once wrote: “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” This can be caught up in racism, sexism, homophobia or fatphobia, or just plain-old run-of-the-mill ‘family of origins’ toxicity.
It can be an act of liberation to love yourself, to love your body. Do you notice now and then how wonderous and beautiful you are? It is a grounding virtue, a root value for living to be able to see your own beauty. Beauty is necessary. Baldwin talked about unlearning the negative so he could “walk on the earth as though [he] had a right to be here.” To belong.
With Baldwin, I say when we are able to belong within our own skin, then we are able to belong anywhere. Do you feel like you belong? Loving our own bodies, being wowed by ourselves now and then, opens us into so much more. It is a grounding virtue to be aware of your own beauty! Are you grounded in beauty?
Early in this pandemic, back when we still thought it might stretch on for months – before we knew it would stretch for years – a few wise souls started talking a lot about somatic practices, embodies spiritual practices. This became a theme in some of my collegial ministers’ retreats. More than once in 2020, I attended a program focused around somatic practices, around grounding and embodied resilience, around getting back into our own bodies.
What a gift it was to be invited into that practice. I am more familiar with spiritual practices that lead me away from my body. I do a regular silent meditation, a practice of emptying my thoughts. While learning to do this kind of silent meditation, thoughts would intrude and my own body would intrude – something would itch or I would feel an ache somewhere or I would feel the urge to fidget. The goal for this form of silent meditation, I learned, was to gently notice this desire to fidget or that itchy body part; notice and then release it.
But these somatic practices I was offered at the beginning of the pandemic were intended to have my focus on my body. When my attention was on this or that part of my body the point was not to gently notice and release. The point was to gently notice and embrace.
Here we all were, isolated and unable to be together in person. Each of us alone at our computer screens trying to connect across the long, lonely distance. And instead of lament or problem solving or minimizing – I was invited to celebrate my own body, to appreciate how my body was surviving and showing up in the hard times, to notice how marvelously wrought.
And here’s the thing: this activity was designed to help us with the isolation. It seems counterintuitive, but it worked. It was intended to help us connect with each other – to support and be supported by each other. Adrienne Maree Brown has said:
“Belonging doesn’t begin with other people accepting us. It begins with our acceptance of ourselves. Of the particular life and skin each of us was born into, and the work that that particular birth entails… From that deep place of belonging to ourselves, we can understand that we are inherently worthy of each other.”
If you are feeling isolated and disconnected, if the pandemic or any other circumstance is causing you to feel cut off – there is a healing way to begin just with yourself. Adrienne Maree Brown has been an important teacher for many Unitarian Universalists lately, leading workshops at General Assembly and for religious professionals. She’s not UU but I think she likes us. She helps me to see the connection between my own ‘deep place of belonging’ within myself where I can, as she puts it, “understand that we are inherently worthy of each other.” I can notice the beauty and wondrousness of my own body. It’s not arrogant to wow yourself every once in a while. It’s not arrogance, it’s just paying attention.
Now, I do know being self-focused has a negative edge. I understand how loving yourself and thinking yourself quite beautiful can show up as a personality flaw. But this spiritual practice of loving your own body, of being wowed by yourself now and then, it is not an exercise in vanity.
In the reading we had this morning, Riley warned against imagining beauty as something out there – only found in art or nature, or only affirmed through the eyes of another – she wrote: “In this state you are not approaching what you are seeking. You are running from your own face.” Vanity is about seeking external proof of our beauty in other’s eyes. What we are talking about now is acknowledging the internal evidence of that wondrous beauty ourselves.
To be truly self-aware of my own beauty does not lead me into vanity. Instead, it leads me deeper into connection with the beauty of others. Riley talked about it as “the capacity to be in awe of humanity, even your own.” Earlier I said this beauty can be a grounding virtue, a root value. Loving our own bodies, being wowed by ourselves now and then, opens us into so much more. I want to talk about the ‘more.’ I want to talk about what grows out of this root of self-beauty.
When we know that we belong to ourselves, when we love our bodies as they are, it opens us to a stance of acceptance for ourselves that will almost automatically be extended to others. The same ‘paying attention’ that allows us to wow ourselves every once in a while, will also allow us to be wowed by others as well.
We are meant to be connected. We are meant to have roots that go down and also runners that travel out! We are meant to be in this together so we all might thrive. This line of reasoning takes us into conversations about the welfare of all those in need, into convictions of liberation and justice, into connections of respect and love without jealousy for the success and joy of others. These conversations and convictions and connections are the ‘more’ I am talking about that can arise from our simple self-awareness of our own beauty and wonder. (Hold up hand)
I invite you to notice your own hand, really look at it. It is a little easier for babies, I know. My granddaughter is a mere half-a-year old and perhaps easily impressed. It is harder for us adults to release all the layers of negativity we’ve been fed through the years. But notice your hand!
You are a marvel to behold. It’s not arrogant to wow yourself every once in a while. It’s not arrogance, it’s just paying attention. Our bodies are locations of wonder and beauty All the world’s wondrousness is not contained in the birds and waterfalls and the sunlight at dawn. Look at your hand! We, too, are locations of awe and amazement if we will but pay attention.
And what about all the other hands around us? We are meant to be connected. We are meant to see each other as beautiful. We each carry the image of the divine. What might that mean communally? Cole Arthur Riley raises this point in her book:
“Some theologians say it is not an individual but a collective people who bear the image of God. I quite like this, because it means we need a diversity of people to reflect God more fully. Anything less and the image becomes pixelated and grainy, still beautiful but lacking in clarity.” (p7)
So my message today is not only a message of embracing your own beauty, your own body. It is also a message of liberation and wonder. All of humanity is caught up in this image of God. You, yes – certainly you! But also everyone else, in fact, only with everyone else.
When you feel isolated or disconnected you can reliably turn to your own body for wisdom and wonder. You are a location of the beauty and awe. And from there, do you notice all the other amazing people as well.
When we are grounded in beauty, we will belong in this world.
When we are grounded in beauty, we will see the amazing beauty of others.
When we are grounded in our own beautiful bodies, we will respect and honor the bodies of others – particularly the vulnerable among us.
When we are grounded in beauty we are connected like roots and runners to everything else; and we will bring more justice and care to the world.
When we are grounded in beauty we will belong.
When we belong, we will welcome others to also belong and from there, every good thing can grow.
It is not arrogance to believe this is true. It is just paying attention.
Multiple Voices, One Faith. Nuanced, surprising, and beautiful, Unitarian Universalism joins together myriad sources and experiences. It’s right there in our name: Unitarian Universalism. But the layers go deeper than the consolidation of two American religious traditions. … Christians, Humanists, Atheists. Jews, Pagans, Buddhists, and Muslims. Spiritual refugees and lifelong UUs with multigeneration family histories. University scholars, ordained ministers, chaplains, and lay leaders. Religious educators, administrators, and music ministers.
Unitarian Universalism is not, as some may quip, a place where we can believe anything we want. It is a place to approach our growth as spiritual people with openness and curiosity, a place where multiple beliefs, multiple traditions, and multiple life experiences will enrich and inform our search. In community, we piece together a faith that seeks to make sense of the world and empowers us to create change. …
Sermon:
Our reading this morning is from our UU World magazine, the spring edition of this year: “Stitching a Layered Faith.” Following the opening paragraph we just heard, there are four short pieces written by four voices in our faith. The article reveals a portion of the many, many voices in our one faith. I’ve asked our worship associate to read the four sections from the four different authors for us as we work our way through the sermon this morning.
Many voices, one faith. This is important because this point about “many voices, one faith” is a central aspect of who we are, or maybe I should say of how we are together. We do not all believe the same thing. In our story this morning, https://www.uua.org/worship/words/time-all-ages/its-not-what-you-believe-how we talked about how “most religions define themselves by what they believe.” But Unitarian Universalism is different in that we define ourselves by how we believe, by how we carry our beliefs together. We have long kept a ‘freedom of conscience’ concept in our central definitions of ourselves. We do not insist we all believe the same; we instead allow each to believe as they must, as their individual conscience demands. We trust that faith cannot be coerced. I’ve long felt this to be one of our greatest features as a faith.
A Unitarian Universalists, we are “Christians, Humanists, Atheists. Jews, Pagans, Buddhists, and Muslims.” We are skeptics, seekers, and searchers; we are people who blend and balance a bounty of beliefs. And the best part of all that is how we have joined together – beyond belief – to be together in community. Our centering bond is not around shared beliefs; it is, instead, a covenant. We are not one in believing, but one in the values we share.
Now, usually I would pivot at this point to talk at length about the covenant that binds us as one. Usually this would turn into an elegant sermon about our agreements. But today I would have us dig into the differences. Today, let us consider not what holds us together, but the differences that create tension in our togetherness. Today, let us explore some of our glorious tensions.
Reading:
Janice Marie Johnson
As a Jamaican child of the Caribbean, … My grandparents and parents were nation builders who taught me to notice and question “all that is our lives.”
Jamaica is home to churches, temples, synagogues, and many other communities of worship. As a child, my family encouraged me to ask questions about religion. I asked questions about everything around me: about God, Rastafarianism, the virgin birth, Catholicism, Jesus, sin, Judaism, and much more. Unlike my Sunday school teachers, my parents offered expansive answers and more questions for collective contemplation.
At home, I grew up with the undeniable success of reggae, which crossed borders of class, matters of conscience, and religion. Rastafarianism, the dominant religion of early reggae musicians, was often shunned by the Jamaican elite, but things were changing. My family developed dear friendships with reggae and Rastafarian musical families, including the Marleys. To this day, I consider my Rastafarian “bredda,” Peter Tosh, to be a modern-day prophet. In his song, “Equal Rights,” he urges us to strive to attain equal rights with justice, to honor our ancestors and ourselves. His prayer is my prayer for our faith, for our fragile world, for all the generations.
I was blessed to grow up knowing that “Children should be seen and heard.” It is reminiscent of the UU message, “The answer is to question.” Our voices matter. They are sacred. For this, I give thanks.
Sermon:
You may recognize the name Janice Marie Johnson. She is a Commissioned Lay Minister, or CLM, serving a UU congregation in New York City. She is part of a cohort of CLMs that includes our own Commissioned Lay Minister Jeff Donahue. Janice and Jeff are colleagues and friends. We have used material from Janice Marie Johnson in our worship services several times in recent years.
In her piece just now, Johnson talks about blending Rastafarianism with Unitarian Universalism. Do you know the central beliefs of Rastafarianism? One aspect of that faith most of us would agree with is the emphasis on freedom and liberation of the community. The particulars of that, I imagine, most of us would disagree with of at least question. The particulars say historic slavery and current economic and racial oppression are simply the Jamaican people being tested by God; and that soon, God will deliver them from captivity back to their rightful place in Zion which is really Africa.
I don’t know if Johnson, in harkening to her Jamaican and Rastafarian roots, is proclaiming her belief in every part of that. Johnson talks about certain values and practices she still holds from her childhood. But she doesn’t say if there are particular beliefs. So let us step back from this exact example and notice a common tension that lives among us.
Many Unitarian Universalists grew up in a different faith tradition. It is common to have an appreciation of some of the aspects of your childhood faith while no longer subscribing to all the beliefs of that faith. And that can create a bit of tension for folks. Our practices and actions, how we behave in the world, are rooted in values and beliefs. There is a tension when we don’t really hold those beliefs anymore yet still hold strong to the practice and actions that were inspired by those old beliefs.
As Unitarian Universalists, we allow for the blending of our experiences to inform our living and our values. This is how we have people who say they are Unitarian Universalist as well as a second religious description. Our next section of the reading, for example, is from James Ishmael Ford who is American Zen Buddhist priest and a Unitarian Universalist minister.
Reading:
James Ishmael Ford
The single most powerful source for my spiritual life has been silence. Discovering the place between words and ideas, tasting it, smelling it, listening to it, has opened me to the rhythms of life and death and to the heart of love.
I have a formal practice that invites the silence. Over the years, finding regular times to just sit with it has been critical. Taking a few days or even a week to sit with others in a practice centered on silence has been life-giving. …
Silence tells me where I come from. It points to where I will go. And it runs a wild current through my life today. Silence … shows me how I am connected to the rest of my human family and to the larger family of things.
I notice it as I inhale. I notice it as I exhale. I notice it on the turns, in and out.
My words, feeble things in general, attempt to recall what I’ve learned within those silent spaces where the universes are revealed. Sometimes I succeed.
These words birthed in silence, I’ve found, point to the great healing.
Sermon:
Rev. Ford’s blended beliefs lead him to certain practices such as silent meditation. That is a practice in line with both Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism. Mindfulness meditation, modeled after various Buddhist practices, is quite common in Unitarian Universalist congregations.
The tension I would lift up after hearing Ford’s piece is the tension between the individual and community. Some contend that the goal of a congregation is to support the spiritual growth of the individual. Others insist that our goal is to build a beloved community. Rather than trying to resolve the tension, it is worthy to let our congregations live in the tension.
Imagine a conversation, for example, between Ford and Johnson about the complimentary values of silence and speaking out, of inner work and outward engagement. Ford wrote: “Silence tells me where I come from. It points to where I will go.” And like a counter point, Johnson has written, “Our voices matter.” Both authors talk about the connection they feel with their community and how that connection draws them to serve the needs of the world. But they arrive to that conclusion from different paths – silence and speaking out, reaching in and reaching out. I often tackle this tension in my sermons, calling on us to do our inner work, to be gentle with ourselves; and in other sermons I lean more heavily on our call to build a better world together. But the answer is not one or the other. The tension allows amazing things to arise.
The next voice we will hear from the reading is Rev. Abhi Janamanchi. I know Rev. Janamanchi from our time together in seminary. I have reached out to him a number of times for counsel and advice. He is a good colleague.
Reading:
Abhi Janamanchi
I grew up in a Hindu household. Some of my earliest experiences of devotion came from watching my grandmother every morning … chanting Sanskrit mantras in front of the family shrine. She embodied the Hindu idea that the spiritual journey is something deeply personal, between oneself and the Holy, and that I need to find and follow my own path.
So, I became a Unitarian Universalist-Hindu.
My UU-Hindu faith declares that underlying and animating the human self is a reservoir of being that is infinite, all-pervading, and ultimate truth-consciousness-joy (sat-chit-ananda) known as brahman. The infinite brahman is present in all beings.…
My UU-Hindu faith focuses on life before death. It is about being awakened from our inertia to life, again and again. It proposes a way of being engaged in this world that is characterized by liberation from the many manifestations of greed and by a deep affirmation of abundance and generosity.
My UU-Hindu faith promotes the inherent worth, dignity, and divinity of all beings. It rejects any social, cultural, or political systems founded on inequity and injustice.
My UU-Hindu faith teaches personal responsibility and accountability. It reminds me that the consequences of our actions extend beyond our individual lives.
To be a UU-Hindu is to do the daily work of investing my time, my gifts, and my life in service of a Life larger than my own.
Sermon:
It is here I would lift up the most obvious and most recognized tension in our faith: the tension around God. This tension has a long history among us.
Over the years when I have checked, I have reliably found that more than half of this Binghamton congregation does not believe in God. Others here believe in something greater but do not call it God. Janamanchi speaks of the infinite brahman, for example, as well as Life with a capital “L.” But he does not, at least in this article piece, speak of God by that name. So it is with some of us here in this congregation. Others among us will speak of God and use the word God, but often find it necessary to clarify what they mean by the word God rather than to let an incorrect assumption of what is meant to occur. And some among us practice a faith that calls on many names for many Gods and Goddesses.
And yet we are all still here in the room together; many voices, one faith. We disagree about this question about the existence of God. A point that is usually a central belief in Christian congregations. For us, it is not a problem; it is a rich tension.
I was recently reminded that a few decades back, the word “God” was considered controversial in our sanctuary. Part of what changed from then to now is a healthy recognition of how valuable it is to allow the tension of our different beliefs to inform who we are as a community.
I am a theist. I use the word God to talk about that power and grace that pervades our living. But I don’t need everyone to agree with me. Differences in our beliefs can be approached with curiosity rather than confrontation. Tell me more about your values and what inspires you to be a good person. God is often part of such a conversation for people who believe in God. But lean in and listen – not only for your own voice but for the voices of others. We have much to learn from each other. It is an enriching tension and it leads us deeper.
Reading:
Amanda Poppei
When it comes down to it, my faith comes from the amazing, against-all-odds, courageous, beautiful resilience of the human heart: the way that people find joy after grief, courage after fear, liberation after oppression. I never fail to be awestruck by those stories. But every faith needs a wellspring, a source, that can be continually renewed—and that’s why I read romance novels. No, really. This minister is telling you to read romance novels—well, if they help you remember that love is always possible. Or to watch children’s fairytale movies, which so often have at their heart a message of redemption after mistakes. Or to collect the stories around you, the heroes of resistance in a broken world, who keep on fighting or loving or simply surviving even when the system seems (is) stacked against them.
So often we imagine that our moments of spiritual insight have to come from the “right” kinds of places, from beautiful poetry or the woods. And listen, I love poetry! And the woods! But what I want to say today is that the spiritual is all around us, that our faith can be replenished in the silly, the sexy, the sacred: that these may just be one and the same. I once knew someone who found themselves in a deep valley of sadness, struggling to understand how to continue forward. They found their way out through episodes of Care Bears. So be exuberant with your faith-sourcing! Allow wisdom in from every source! Perhaps, like me, you’ll find a reminder of the heart’s resilience in the least likely of places.
Sermon:
Rev. Poppei is an atheist. You’ll notice perhaps there is no reference to a deity in her piece. She served for a decade at the Washington Ethical Society in D.C., an intentionally non-theistic community. But in her piece, she leads us to consider different sources of inspiration. Indeed, all of the voices from this article lead us to consider our difference sources of inspiration.
As a congregation we talk about resilience and grace, love, peace, and faith. We draw from many sources leading us to actions and practices in the world. Those sources of inspiration are many and sometimes surprising. This summer we had worship services about walking the labyrinth and baking cookies as practices that can lead us to greater wholeness and connection. We heard about poetry and caring for the earth. Lay members of this congregation stepped into this space to share with us what nourishes and inspires them.
And no one was required to agree with everything that was shared. Maybe poetry or baking is not your thing. It doesn’t have to be. But maybe there is still a requirement revealed here. Maybe we do make a commitment – not to all believe one thing or another – but to listen to and encourage one another along the way as we grow in spirit and understanding. Maybe the value of experiencing the tensions is a way for each of us to learn to remain true to our own beliefs. To listen to and encourage the search for ourselves and others. The tensions are worth it. They help keep us true.
May we continue to abide together in the rich tensions of our different beliefs.
May this ‘abiding’ be revealed anew as one of our most potent agreements together.
May this time we share lead you into deeper understanding
and may it strengthen the connections you have to your own faith
and to the people around you in this community.
And may we go well into the coming days and weeks ahead.
Soul Stories – I love a good story. Many stories have nourished my soul. Not all of them are profound or necessarily spiritual, although many are. This morning let me share a sampling of the better stories that have aided me in my journey. (Note: The manuscript has one version of the stories. But in the video, I share the stories differently because I was not reading them, I was telling them.)
Pre-story “The Fable of the Eagle in the Chicken Yard”
A fable is told about an eagle that thought he was a chicken. When the eagle was very small, he fell from the safety of his nest. A chicken farmer found the eagle, brought him to the farm, and raised him in a chicken coop among his many chickens. The eagle grew up doing what chickens do, living like a chicken, and believing he was a chicken.
A naturalist came to the chicken farm to see if what he had heard about an eagle acting like a chicken was really true. He knew that an eagle is king of the sky. He was surprised to see the eagle strutting around the chicken coop, pecking at the ground, and acting very much like a chicken. The farmer explained to the naturalist that this bird was no longer an eagle. He was now a chicken because he had been trained to be a chicken and he believed that he was a chicken.
The naturalist knew there was more to this great bird than his actions showed as he “pretended” to be a chicken. He was born an eagle and had the heart of an eagle, and nothing could change that. The man lifted the eagle onto the fence surrounding the chicken coop and said, “Eagle, thou art an eagle. Stretch forth thy wings and fly.” The eagle moved slightly, only to look at the man; then he glanced down at his home among the chickens in the chicken coop where he was comfortable. He jumped off the fence and continued doing what chickens do. The farmer was satisfied. “I told you it was a chicken,” he said.
The naturalist returned the next day and tried again to convince the farmer and the eagle that the eagle was born for something greater. He took the eagle to the top of the farmhouse and spoke to him: “Eagle, thou art an eagle. Thou dost belong to the sky and not to the earth. Stretch forth thy wings and fly.” The large bird looked at the man, then again down into the
chicken coop. He jumped from the man’s arm onto the roof of the farmhouse.
Knowing what eagles are really about, the naturalist asked the farmer to let him try one more time. He would return the next day and prove that this bird was an eagle. The farmer, convinced otherwise, said, “It is a chicken.”
The naturalist returned the next morning to the chicken farm and took the eagle and the farmer some distance away to the foot of a high mountain. They could not see the farm nor the chicken coop from this new setting. The man held the eagle on his arm and pointed high into the sky where the bright sun was beckoning above. He spoke: “Eagle, thou art an eagle! Thou dost belong to the sky and not to the earth. Stretch forth thy wings and fly.” This time the eagle stared skyward into the bright sun, straightened his large body, and stretched his massive wings. His wings moved, slowly at first, then surely and powerfully. With the mighty screech of an eagle, he flew.
(In Walk Tall, You’re A Daughter Of God, by Jamie Glenn)
—
Story #1 The Telescope Stone by Rev. Douglas Taylor
I remember one time when I was a teenager sitting alone in the woods. I had a free afternoon and nothing better to do, so I sat on the ground in the woods. I was staring at a stone. I suppose I had recently had science lessons about atomic structures because I started thinking about the small parts of the stone that go into making it a stone. I stared at the stone and thought about how it was made up of smaller parts that are in turn made up of even smaller parts. How far down does it go? What is the smallest part made of?
As I thought of little electrons swirling around a nucleus, my perspective suddenly shifted, it telescoped out from the very small to the very large. Atoms became planets. I reeled with the awareness that the subatomic particles and swirling galaxies of another universe were the same thing. For a brief moment I and the whole universe swirled inside that stone. Everything was connected. Inside that instant the stone and I and ten thousand universes were the same thing.
And then it was over, in less space than a breath it was finished because I noticed myself. I thought, “Hey, I’m having a really profound thought.” And suddenly it was over, my parietal lobe turned back on, the universe fell back into place, and I was simply sitting alone in the woods staring at a stone. Try as I might I could not get the stone to do that trick again.
—
Story #2 The Homeless Man in Church (anonymous)
The story begins in a simple New England white-clapboard church. The minister was mid-way through the reading of the text when people in the back noticed a disheveled man walking up the aisle. He was not someone who had been there before. He had the look of a homeless person, unwashed and unpleasant. The people in the pews could smell him before they saw him. And people would lean a little, or move their bags up onto the pew making it clear to the man as he looked around the seats on his way up the aisle: “don’t sit here,” “there’s no room for you in this pew.” The homeless man made it all the way up to the front pew without finding a space to sit. With a shrug, he walked a few steps in front of the first pew and settled himself down on the floor in front of the pulpit.
The minister had noticed him by now, having reached the conclusion of the reading and looking up to see everyone’s attention was fixed on the homeless man as he sat on the floor in the front. The minister noticed the head usher making his way down the aisle and knowing the situation would soon be in hand, he launched into the pastoral prayer. Other people also notice the respected elder of the church who served as head usher coming down the aisle. He moved slowly and with great purpose, leaning heavily on his cane as he walked. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as they saw the old pillar of the community coming forward. He would deal with the homeless man; he would kindly but firmly escort the man out.
When the elder arrived at the front of the church he promptly dropped his cane onto the floor and to everyone’s great surprise and chagrin, they watched as he slowly lowered his stiff old form down onto the floor to sit with the other man. The minister had stopped his prayer mid-sentence. An awed silence filled the room.
After a moment the minister spoke with wisdom and humility saying, “All of you here will quite likely not remember a word of the prepared remarks I am about to offer. But every one of you will remember for the rest of your lives the example of compassion and hospitality we have just witnessed.”
—
Story # 3 The Humming Planet by Joshua Searle-White
Astronaut Annie was lost. Definitely lost. She had been in her spaceship, coming back from a meeting on the planet Baldon, when she had run into this huge space storm, and it blew her way off course. By the time she had gotten control of the spaceship again and gotten everything back together, she had no idea where she was or how to get back to Earth.
“Well, now what?”, she said to herself. “I guess I’d better ask for directions.” So she looked in her space radar, and sure enough, there was a planet not too far away. She headed for it, came in through the atmosphere, found a flat place, and landed her ship gently on the ground. She stood up and pushed the button to open the spaceship door.
And when the door opened, she was greeted with a beautiful sight. She was in some kind of a garden, on a lawn of green grass, with purple and red flowers growing all over and a thick forest nearby. It was pretty much like Earth, but somehow the colors were just a little bit … brighter. But when she stepped out of the ship onto the grass, she had the strangest experience. From somewhere out there, she heard … a soft, humming sound. (hmmm … ) Not really a song, more like … like … like velvet hands holding her. Like a warm soft blanket wrapped around her. Like a sweet taste in the air. And there was just a hint of it everywhere, coming from everything – from the flowers, from the trees, from the grass, and even from the wind rustling in the trees. And even stranger, it seemed to change as she moved around, sometimes louder and sometimes softer, depending on where she moved and what she was looking at. It was almost like it was alive. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard, and she wanted to hear it more and more and more.
Annie saw a path heading out of the garden, and so she decided to take it and see if she could find someone who could give her directions for how to get home. She walked down the path, through the trees, and then into a small town, all the while accompanied by just a faint trace of the hum. When she walked into the town, she saw crowds and crowds of people, walking, going into and out of stores, going home after the day’s work. And as she walked into the crowds, she noticed something strange. The humming came from the people, too! She could hear it as they passed by, as they talked, as they looked at and helped and thought about each other, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, sometimes changing its tune, sometimes disappearing into the air. They weren’t actually humming, but the sound somehow came from inside them.
Well, Annie saw that among all of the rushing people there was one man, standing next to a store window looking at something on the ground. Annie walked over to him to ask him about where to find directions home. She tapped him on the shoulder, but when he looked up at her, she gasped. He had only one eye, and his face looked kind of twisted, as though had had some kind of terrible injury. The man said, “Yes, may I help you?”, but Annie was so scared by how he looked that she turned away from him without saying anything and began to walk away.
But you know what? As she began to go away from him, the music stopped. And so Annie also stopped, startled at the silence. She’d gotten used to the beautiful hum, and now it was gone! And she turned back towards the man, and as she looked at him, injured face and all, the humming started again. She looked at him and moved closer to him, and the humming became even louder, and as she walked up to him again, she heard it even more clearly than she had ever heard it before. And this time, it was coming from someplace inside her!
She was still afraid of him, because of how he looked, but she loved to hear that music, and so she walked back up to him, and looked at him, and apologized for running away, and asked him how she could find out how to get home. He told her very kindly about a building where there were people who could help her, and she thanked him and went on, all the while with that humming soaring inside her. It was a great feeling, a feeling she had never had before. It was a very strange experience, but the more she walked, the more she could hear the song in herself, when she looked at other people, smiled at them, didn’t turn away and run or hide from people. And the song ebbed and flowed, and twisted and turned, almost as if it were alive, almost as if she were dancing with it. And when at one point she tripped and almost fell over a curb, and some people caught her so she didn’t fall, she heard the song from their hearts, and the song came from her in response, and … and even from the trees, and the buildings, and the sidewalks the song came in response, all flowing together in an intricate and beautiful harmony.
Well, she finally arrived at the building that the old man had told her about, and sure enough, in there they had star maps and computers and telescopes and stuff, and they told her where she was and how to get back to earth. And so she walked back through the town, through the woods, and into the garden, and back to her ship. All the while that humming sang to her, mostly quietly, but sometimes with new melodies and harmonies, until she finally stood at the doorway back into her ship. She turned and looked out at the garden, and for a moment, she really, really, really did not want to go home. She had never felt anything like what that humming made her feel; she had never heard a song so alive, so embracing, and it was like it was calling her to stay. But then she thought of her home, and her family, and all the things he knew back on earth, and she knew she had to leave. So she went into the spaceship, closed the door, and took off back into space.
And she flew through space for a couple of days, and then sure enough, she found Earth right where it should be. She orbited the planet once, found the place where she lived, came down through the atmosphere, and landed, right back in her own country, in her own town, in her own backyard. As the ship settled down, she had a mix of feelings – she was really happy to be home, but she still felt a little sadness at leaving the Humming Planet. And once the ship was down, she stood up, and she pushed the button to open the door, and it opened, and she saw all the familiar sights and sounds of her home – the backyard with some trees, some spring flowers growing, and best of all, her family running out of the house shouting “Annie’s back! Annie’s back!” But as she stepped out of the spaceship, she had the strangest experience. From somewhere out here, she heard … a soft, humming sound. Not really a song, more like … like … like velvet hands holding her. Like a warm soft blanket wrapped around her. Like a sweet taste in the air. And it was coming from everywhere, from the grass, and the trees, and the flowers, and from her family, and … and … and from inside herself, too. How could this be? This wasn’t the Humming Planet! And as she stepped out, and hugged her family, and said hello to her friends, and went about being home again, that song was there, in her and in others and from all around, whenever they loved, helped, and lived.
Maybe Earth is the Humming Planet, after all.
—
Story #4 John Muir and the Wind Storm
John Muir, some of you may know, was the great naturalist from the late 1800’s. He is the “Father of our National Parks” and founder of the Sierra Club. He was also a bit of a thrill seeker. He loved to really get out into nature and experience it as fully as possible. He would climb trees, scramble up rocky inclines, and he got out in all manner of weather to experience nature. I offer remarks from his own journal to reveal this teaching story.
“One of the most beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever enjoyed in the Sierra,” Muir wrote in A Wind-Storm in the Forests, “occurred in December, 1874, when I happened to be exploring one of the tributary valleys of the Yuba River.”
He was on his way to visit a friend that day, but when he noticed a fine wind-storm brewing he decided to instead push out into the woods to enjoy it. I don’t know about you, but when I see a wind storm coming, I like to have some shelter. John Muir was led by a different impulse. “For on such occasions (he wrote) Nature has always something rare to show us, and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof.” After spending a good while walking around the woods in the midst of this great windstorm it occurred to him “that it would be a fine thing to climb one of the trees to obtain a wider outlook.”
So he hunted for a good choice. He found a stand of tall Douglas Spruces growing close together. He knew that the wind was strong enough to uproot a single tree standing alone, but a dozen or more trees together served to protect all the trees in the copse.
“Though comparatively young, (he writes in his journal) they were about 100 feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy. Being accustomed to climb trees in making botanical studies, I experienced no difficulty in reaching the top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so noble an exhilaration of motion.”
He clung to the high slender tree as it bent and swirled in the storm. The tree bent from 20 to 30 degrees in arc but he trusted the companion stand around him to keep his tree rooted and upright throughout the experience. He describes it as exciting and beautiful. He felt the wind in his pulse. He described light and wind sweeping across the valley spread before his eyes as if he were watching waves on the open sea; the trees undulating and swaying in concentric circles, lines of wind chasing each other in a water-like flow from one end of valley to the other. “I kept my lofty perch for hours, (he writes) frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the music by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was streaming past.”
This experience was a seminal moment for Muir’s sense of connectedness with all nature. “We all travel the milky way together,” he wrote, “trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings–many of them not so much.”
—
Story #5 Angry Nails (anonymous)
There a story of a boy who had a hard time controlling his anger. He would often lash out when he was angry. Finally, his mother told him that every time he lashed out in anger he should go out to the back yard and pound a nail into the fence. During the first few days, the boy was out in the back yard pounding nails several times a day. Over time, the boy went to the fence less often. Then the boy went an entire day without going out to the fence to pound in a nail.
The boy said this to his mother who replied, “Now every time you control your anger and do not lash out I want you to go out and remove one of your nails from then fence.” And this the boy did. Sometimes he would still pound a nail in, but more often he removed nails.
Eventually there came a day when the boy had not pounded a new nail into the fence in weeks, and he had removed all the nails from his earlier visits. His mother then took him out to the fence and said, “I am proud of you, you have learned to control your anger. I want you to remember, however, that although you have removed the nails you had pounded into the fence, the holes from those nails are still there in the wood. You cannot take those away. You can always remove a nail that you have pounded into the fence but you can never remove the hole that you make with the nail.”
“So it is when you lash out with your anger,” his mother continued. “You can apologize and be forgiven, but the damage you cause will always remain, at least in some fashion. It is good to apologize, better to not need to. But you will need to. No one can move through this life without creating a few nail holes.”
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Story #6 Did You Find Any Pieces Today? by Rev. Douglas Taylor
When Mariam was a child, her favorite thing was when her grandfather would visit and tell her stories at bedtime. They lived nearby and so she was able to get a bedtime story from him at least once a week. She loved to hear his stories. And her favorite was the story about the shattered vessels.
“It is my favorite as well,” he would always say. And then he would tell her, “There are many versions of how the world came to be. But the best one is Tikkun Olam because we get to take part. At the beginning, God created Love, and there was so much Love it filled ten large vessels. And God sent those vessels to the world. But the Love was so powerful and so much, that it could not be contained by the vessels. The Love burst the vessels, it shattered them. The Love broke into many pieces and was scattered all over creation, all over the world.”
“And it is our job to find all the pieces?” Miriam would ask.
Her grandfather would smile and nod, “Yes Miriam. That is our part in creation, we need to gather all the scattered pieces and bring them back together to repair the world.”
And then he would lean closer to her and ask, “And did you find any pieces today?”
She always had an answer for him. When she was five, there was always a sparkly rock or a beautiful sunset she would mention to him. On this day, she said, “I found a very pretty feather today.”
“A feather?” he would say, impressed. “Tell me about it.” And she would.
One time she asked, “Grandfather, I have figured this out, right? It’s like a big hide and seek game, and I need to find all the bright and beautiful pieces and collect them.”
Her grandfather would smile down at her adoringly. “Maybe,” he would say with a shrug. “It is a mystery. We tell the story and we ask our questions. It’s good.”
That was when she was five. Later when she was twelve, she had found a different answer. She still loved that story. She still asked for that one as often as any other story each week. He would tell her about the Love and the shattering vessels and the scattering of the pieces. And he would ask, “Did you find any pieces today?”
As a mature twelve-year-old, she was proud to tell him. “I have figured it out, grandfather. I used to think the pieces were pretty things, like glitter that had exploded all over everything. But now I know it is not about finding shiny rocks. It’s about love. Isn’t that right grandfather?”
“Love?” He said, smiling at her. “Maybe,” he would say with a shrug. “It is a mystery. We tell the story and we ask our questions. It’s good.” And then he asked, “Tell me more about the Love you have found this week.”
And she would. She would tell him about how she loved her parents and how she loved him and grandmother, and on and on.
Later, when she was in high school, he would still come over sometimes and they would talk. Sometimes she would ask him to tell the story of Tikkun Olam – even though she was too old for bedtime stories. He would tell her and he would ask “Did you find any pieces today?”
And she would tell him about kindness she had given or received. About a boy who helped her figure out the answer to a homework problem, or the time she helped a stranger who had fallen in the grocery store. She said, “I think it is silly that I used to think the pieces of God’s love were shiny rocks. And it is embarrassing that I thought it was about something as mushy as love. It must be about kindness. Do I have it right this time grandfather?”
And he would smile and shrug, “Maybe. Tell me more about the kindness you found this week.”
The years went on and Miriam grew older. She fell in love and got married. She asked her grandfather to tell her favorite story at the wedding – which everyone loved.
A few years after that, when she was in her early-twenties, her grandfather grew ill and went to the nursing home. She visited him every week and he would ask her to tell him stories. Which she did. She would tell him her favorite story about Tikkun Olam, repairing the world. And he would ask her, “Did you find any pieces today?”
One day when he asked that of her, she was quiet for a while, thinking. She said, “Grandfather, I think I finally get it. The pieces are not just beautiful, shiny things. But they are not love or kindness either. It’s all of it. All of it together. Isn’t that right?” she asked.
He smiled up at her adoringly and shrugged. “Maybe. It is a mystery. We tell the story and we ask our questions. It is good.”
And so her life went on. She had a career helping people in her way. She and her spouse had a child together and she told her child the story. And each day, she would find a few piece; she would look for beauty and show it to others; she would make her life and the lives of people around her better; she would repair the world.
It is, I trust, an iconic image for us, easy to call to mind. The singer is at the bedside of their young child, singing a lullaby – a calming image of love and care. My spouse and I spent years when our children were young with this nightly ritual of singing them to sleep with lullabies. It is a beloved memory for me.
Today is Mother’s Day – the day we celebrate and honor mothers. I would offer a slight nuance to my focus under that heading – let us honor the nurturing role. Who in your life offered that nurture to you over your younger years? In most cases it will have been your mother. But life is complex. The one who gave you life may not have been the nurturer of your life. Yet we have all had nurturers in our lives or we would not be here.
To some degree on another we all had someone in our lives whose care and love has been woven deep into who we are and who we have become. And that is the experience I invite you to call to mind this morning – the one whose care and love has been woven deep into who you are and who you have become.
A year ago, my mother died and I’ve had time to consider the impact of losing someone who has been deeply important to me, whose loss I am still grieving.
I was reading an article recently https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/brain-grief/ about grief and the brain. I was struck by the way the author talked about the neural connections in our brains that form when we bond with people the way a baby bonds with their mother. There are changes in our brain when we develop such bonds. When I say, poetically, that we have people whose care and love have been woven into who we are, it seems neuroscience offers a similar description. Such relationships shape our neural pathways. We need nurturers in our lives.
My spouse and I are new grandparents. Our own children are now grown. It has been a while since we sang lullabies to our little ones. And while we are not singing our grandchild to sleep each night, some lullaby singing has returned to our lives. And of course, if I am to speak of lullabies, I must also mention the companion activity at bedtime for children: asking big questions.
Here we are at the end of the day. We’ve had a story and perhaps a small glass of milk, whatever the usual pieces are to the bedtime ritual. And for many it is a time for children to ask big questions. Why is the sky blue? Where do we go when we die? Can I have a pet triceratops? Why does it get light and then dark and then light again? Where do babies come from? Why do we have two eyes and two ears and two nose holes but only one mouth?
Often after fielding a few of these questions, we would gently move into the singing of lullabies.
Goodnight, my angel
Time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
Billy Joel has said he wrote the lyrics to this song for his 7-year-old daughter in response to her bedtime questions; in particular, the question: “Where do we go when we die?”
I think it was very astute of Mr. Joel to recognize in that moment the importance of that question, to understand what was really at stake. Where do we go when we die? Last month I delivered a sermon all about heaven and included the various descriptive answers that might arise in talking about heaven: the clouds, the harps, the saints and angels, the theology of being good or being saved – all that. But Billy Joel recognized that what his child was asking for would not have been found in that sermon.
I think I know what
You’ve been asking me
I think you know
What I’ve been trying to say
This question, “Where do we go when we die?” often gets mislabeled as a question about beliefs and faith. Children at bedtime are usually not seeking theology. His daughter asked “Where do we go when we die?” And he answered
Wherever you may go
No matter where you are
I never will be far away
It was never a question about beliefs or heaven. It was a question about love and loss. Where do we go when we die? Where will you go, the child who loves you asks; where will you be when I am left without you and you are gone. (I never will be far away.)
As the parent in the relationship, I want to offer assurance that everything will be alright, that I’ll always be here for my children. I can understand how some parents will say, “Oh, don’t worry about that.” I understand the desire to brush such a question away – even from our adult children, “Don’t worry about that for now.” That dismissiveness is borne of a desire to reassure our children.
But as the child in the relationship, I want to know what I am going to do when my mother has died. I want to know how I am going to keep going when she’s not there as that steady, reliable presence. I want to know how to manage when I am in need of comfort and the one I used to turn to for comfort is gone. I don’t want to be told to not worry. I want to know what will happen to the connection, to the bond between us, to the neural pathways that have grown familiar with your presence.
Did you have conversations like this as the parent or as the child? Can you still have such conversations with the important people in your life? I count myself among the lucky ones in life. I was the child of a woman who did not shy away from such questions. Goodness, that woman would engage unabashedly in topics of sex and death, politics and social issues all day long if we asked her too. As a result, I heard her answers to questions like this, “Where do we go when we die?”
My mother’s answers were about love – God’s love, the love of her parents, that transcendent and transformative power often called God but may be better known as love. Where do we go when we die? We go back to love.
Billy Joel, in an interview from 2016, shared a little more about the experience which led to this song we’ve been focused on. He was putting his child to bed that night and she asked him that question “Where do we go when we die?” Here’s what he said in the interview:
“What I told her was, ‘After you die, you go into other people’s hearts and they take you with them through their lives, and then you pass that along to your children.’ She seemed content with that answer. It was kind of a scary question, but the answer made sense to her.” https://www.songfacts.com/facts/billy-joel/lullabye-goodnight-my-angel
This resonates with me strongly. Frankly I was a little surprised to find that he put it that way, I mean, he is just a singer celebrity! Yet, he so effortlessly produced that answer, an answer I find compelling and nuanced enough for my Process Theology loving brain and for my grief-soaked heart. When we are gone, we are not really gone because we continue in each other’s hearts. That may be what heaven is. I don’t know.
I’ll dip into a little theology here, even though I said earlier that it’s not the point of the question. I’m going to share a little anyway. In process theology, we say the building blocks of reality are not things like atoms and molecules. Instead, it is the events, the happenings that matter most. The interactions of the things create the whole. If you could pick apart a chair, atom by atom, the argument goes, you would end up with a pile of atoms and never find the chair. The chair is about the relationship of the atoms together, it is the interplay of the pieces that make it that chair.
So it is with you and me. I am not merely the atoms currently comprising my body. I am made of the relationships and interactions at the atomic level and at the social level. And I came out of the earth, I grew inside my mother, I was nurtured by her and others over decades. All of that is part of who I am.
For me this is about my mother. But this is not specifically a Mother’s Day sermon, it is a sermon about grappling with the grief and loss of those precious people in our lives whose care and love has been woven deep into who we are and who we have become – and who are not gone. For you that may be a different nurturer. For me it is about my mother. I would not be here if not for her – in so many senses beyond the merely biological logic of it. Her care and love for me has been imbued into my being. She is part of me.
The water’s dark And deep inside this ancient heart You’ll always be a part of me
And though she is gone, I carry her with me still and she is not gone. The people we most love and who love us in return are woven into our identities, our being. The interactions and encounters change us and help shape our becoming.
In our story this morning, The Tenth Good Thing about Barney, the father says, “Things change in the ground… The ground changes things.” He was talking about seeds turning into flowers and beloved pets who have died turning into the soil to help grow the plants and trees.
What I am trying to say is that love does the same sort of change work that the ground does. Love takes the relational interactions of my living and transform them into me. And the people who have nurtured me, the one whose care and love has been woven deep into who I am and who I have become, they are part of me. And even when they are gone, they can never really be gone.
Those who have love you and are now gone, are still part of you, are still working their change on you, shaping who you are and who you will become. And even when they are gone, you carry them in your heart and they are not gone.
I carry you in my heart, we say. The neuroscientists say our brains carry the memories of the bond. Process Theology suggests the relational interactions between us help comprise what it means to be me. I carry you in my heart.
Someday your child may cry And if you sing this lullaby Then in your heart There will always be a part of me
To whom do you sing lullabies? In whom will you continue on?
Rev. Douglas Taylor 