First Parish of Watertown

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry, “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks.
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The joy that isn¹t shared, I¹ve heard,
dies young.



Sermon

When I was little my parents and sometimes my sister would call me
“Markey Maypo.” This was only because coincidentally there was a
television commercial for this cereal called Maypo, which featured a cartoon
character named Markey. I only vaguely remember it, but it seems this
Markey did not readily take to eating Maypo. In fact, he met the spoonful
of oatmeal like gruel with clenched teeth and frozen lips. His parents had
to pretend that the spoonful of cereal was an airplane, and Markey¹s mouth
was the hangar. They would dance the spoon before him with such tantalizing
enticements as, “its loaded with delicious, its maple flavored, its . . . .”
.but before they could say Maypo, he would snap his jaw shut. All the
airplane sounds in the world could not bring him to eat, which shows this
Markey was not like the real life Mark, who to this day, will eat most
anything. Perhaps I am remembering for sermonic effect, but it seems to me
after many failed attempts, the parents left him alone, and then he took a
spoonful of Maypo down his gullet, and belatedly discovered that he actually
liked what he was heretofore rejecting. This response reminds me of the
more recent television commercial where the little boy, Mikey eats the
cereal and his sibling responds, “He likes it.” It is a surprise to
discover we like something belatedly, after we have rejected it, been
cajoled into trying it, and then finally succumb. Think of Dr. Seuss¹ Green
Eggs and Ham. We may feel sorry that we did not try it sooner, or that we
were so difficult and now seek forgiveness from those we were so obstinate
with, but the important thing is that we finally made the discovery. We
realized, this is good.
The crucial thing is not to be weighed down with regret that it took so long
to realize what we were missing, or how good the seemingly bad thing really
turns out to be. What we need to realize is delayed gratitude.
Delayed gratitude is often something that happens with children. When my
boys were small I often tried my own version of the airplane and the hanger
feeding trick. In my case the spoon became one of Thomas the Tank Engine¹s
friends, and the boy¹s mouths became the roundhouse. While I tried to chug,
chug vegetables into their mouths, they kept swinging the roundhouse doors
shut. I don¹t know if they have come to a realization of gratitude yet, but
I expect it any day . . . or year now. I am sure when they realize how much
they like broccoli or peas, I will hear words of gratitude It is true that
children and adults often don¹t want to try something that is new or they
are unsure of, or worst of all, is actually good for you. They expect the
event will be boring or the food will taste bad, but when it is over, they
often come out saying, “that wasn¹t so bad,” or “I liked it.” What they
expect to be miserable turns out to be good.
How do you convince someone that what you want to undertake will be a
good thing in the end? When it involves changing lifestyles, or spending
money it becomes even more difficult. Many years ago Andrea¹s Aunt
developed a scheme whereby she wanted to buy some property in Maine, two
doors down from Andrea¹s grandmother¹s home. The larger scheme was to
develop the property and eventually build a house on the site, a beautiful
home on the ocean. Andrea¹s Aunt was determined to do this, but found that
her husband was a less than willing participant. In fact, I am told he
thought it was all kind of harebrained, and refused to assist in any
material or physical way. Yet Andrea¹s Aunt persisted. She cleared much of
the land herself, and did much of the planning and building herself. Slowly
the house began to take shape. As her dream was brought into fruition by
the sweat of her brow summer after summer, and the wild scheme to build an
ocean front home began to be actualized in all its splendor, her husband¹s
attitude began to change. Slowly but surely this outlandish plan became
something quite positive. What was hers that he scoffed at, became his as
well. Soon it was “our” beautiful house that all “our” friends should come
see and stay at. She was no longer crazy, but rather, an ingenious planner
of great foresight who provided the opportunity for many years of family
gatherings and wonderful memories. Now he is grateful that he has this
home, but whether he expressed his gratitude to her is unknown to me. But
his support for what became an amazing project was delayed and belatedly and
grudgingly given, only to be swept up in the end with complete affirmation.
The perfect example of delayed gratitude in religious scriptures is
probably the story of Joseph. We learn in Genesis that Joseph¹s brothers
are jealous of him partly because of preferential treatment by their father,
including the gift of that infamous many colored coat. So the brothers sell
Joseph into slavery, and he is shipped off to Egypt. The next thing we know
Joseph has proven himself a very successful slave, and eventually ends up as
governor. He is especially revered for his ability to interpret dreams.
Wouldn¹t you know it but his brothers end up starving and need some grain.
They come to Joseph to rescue them from the famine, but do not recognize
him. We could characterize this story as one where the perpetrators have
deep regrets about the choices they have made. They feel immense guilt, and
ask in Chapter 44, “how can we clear ourselves?” Joseph soon makes himself
known to them, but begs them not to be distressed, or to be angry with
themselves. He says it has all worked out for the best. Joseph says that
God has sent him there before them to preserve life.
The goal is to preserve life despite what trials and tribulations have
brought them to this point. Now they must go on. Joseph feels what¹s done
is done, and the brothers clearly feel some degree of remorse. The best
solution is for all to celebrate with delayed gratitude. And so Joseph
embraces his brother Benjamin, and sends the brothers back with wagons to
bring Jacob down into Egypt. It is enough to know that Joseph lives, and
life will continue with new opportunities for love.
Delayed gratitude has much to do with how we feel about our decisions to
trod certain paths and not others. Some of the major life decisions I am
most familiar with revolve around marriage and divorce, children and
step-children. When parents become divorced it is hard for a child not to
feel that their world has been shattered, and thereafter will shift forever
in new and unforeseen directions. Yet even the children often realize in
retrospect how much they have suffered under parents who have fought
bitterly or have differences that cannot be resolved. Then when a
remarriage occurs there is the strong likelihood that the child will resent
the new parent, and sometimes will reject any overtures to develop a new
relationship. We see the child is very unhappy with that which has unfolded,
but that may change when the child sees how much of a confidante or
supporter the new person can be in their lives. We discover a deep felt
gratitude for this new relationship that we once thought was the worst thing
that ever happened to us. So many times this is true in life, something we
thought would be horrible or at least less than desirable turns out to be
exactly what we needed. The person we plan to hate is most helpful to us.
The job we lost turns us in a new direction. The extra burden we didn¹t
want to take on becomes the newest passion in our lives.
It is hard to comprehend we will ever feel gratitude when we are going
through something. We may feel like nothing will ever be the same or as
good again once a life change has enfolded us. We feel nostalgia as a common
expression of wishful thinking about the past. In his poem, “Nostalgia,”
Billy Collins reminds us that everything about the past appears better
because it is a dance we are familiar with or seems good in retrospect. We
want to return to that idyllic moment we remember when the job was going
well or the family was getting along, but some of that may be false memory
recall. Often we feel like we are in a holding pattern, or in the delayed
stage of life, before any possibility of gratitude even exists. In his book
A Box of Matches, Nicholson Baker, writes about a fire he had set up with
paper so he could strike it with a match when he woke up, but some old coals
ignited it, and burned it down during the night. Start building, he says,
recalling the words of Alex Trebek in Jeopardy. This is when in playing the
game you have bet everything and lost, or you do not turn out to be as smart
as you thought you were, and now you have nothing, and it seems like
everyone else is in the thousands. That is when Trebek turns to you and
says, “Start building.”
It is hard to feel any sense of gratitude, delayed or not, when things
seem to hit bottom - divorce, sold into slavery, lost all your Jeopardy
money. Yet this is the time to start building- make new friends, discover
your talents, take it as a first step in a new journey rather than the dead
end of the old. The ancient story of Job is the classic hero who seems to
have no chance to feel gratitude because everything is taken from him. This
story is retold in the play, J.B. by Archibald MacLeish. Like Job, J.B.
finds that all his work, all his tasks, all his family have been
obliterated. Bildad reminds us that no one said life is fair. People who
are innocent, who live right and true, may suffer. God is simply the march
of history, and has o time for innocent individuals. Justice is found in
the flow of history, and not in individual lives. Job¹s suffering is not
for a reason, it is simply paying for bad luck with a few licks, as MacLeish
says. In the end there is no justice for J.B., only love. He says God does
not love, only “is” The wonder is that humans love, and have that chance
again. Finally, J.B. meets up with Sarah, who has left him, but now
returns. Now together, she says there is the opportunity to “blow on the
coal of the heart.” We choose to love life in spite of life¹s pain. Our
love is the answer to the injustice of the universe.
Delayed gratitude asks us to take the long view of life. When we are
undergoing some great pain it is hard to feel gratitude. Our life feels
threatened - something has not worked out, there is illness, a gross
injustice, and we suffer. Gratitude in the midst of injustice reminds me of
the one year celebration of the legalization of same sex marriage in our
state. Here we had thousands of loving couples who have given their hearts
to each other, and yet couldn¹t have and hold the other in any sanctioned,
enduring way. Think how long this gratitude has been delayed with the only
hope for justice, the enduring love of these couples. And for me this has
been about the remarkable stories within the story - 20, 30 , 35, 40 years
together enduring injustice, prejudice and pain of rejection, and now at
least in this time and place, love has broken through and said let us have
gratitude for this opportunity for love that we are given in the midst of
all this injustice and pain. In Hebrew the word for gratitude is hoda¹ah -
the same as the word for confession. We offer thanks, we offer gratitude in
the midst of confessing how much we need one another, how dependent we are
upon each other, how we often make choices we regret, are foolish, misguided
or have events forced upon us by unjust circumstances. We don¹t want to
have to make this painful choice, but we do. It leads us down a new path.
Some day we will look back and say, this is the choice I felt I had to make
at the time with the resources I had. May we say we made that choice with
all the love we could find in our hearts. It was a choice we made for
ourselves, for our children, for our integrity, for what we felt passionate
about. My life is what it is now because of the choices I made. When
Czeslaw Milosz turned 90, like our own Mary Schlivek, he wrote “Late
Ripeness,” where he shows us how the heart finds gratitude for all past
lives we have lived and lost, ready to be “described better than before”
because they have opened the door on the possibility of love today.

Not soon, as late as the approach
of my ninetieth year,

I felt a door opening in me
and I entered

the clarity of each morning.

One after another my former
lives were departing,

like ships, together with
their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens,
the bays of seas

assigned to my brush came closer,

ready now to be described better
than they were before.

Delayed gratitude asks us to rejoice in those choices, for good or ill, for
regrets we now let go and for wonders that were uncovered. Now we must
confess our gratitude for the choices that we made, and live into the future
knowing that while we live, the choice to love is still before us.




Closing words- ”The Healing Time” by Pesha Gertler
Finally on the way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say holy
holy.

Opening Words - excerpt, Florence Weinberger, “The Power in My Mother's
Arms”

There must be rituals
that sever what harms
our connection to the past and lets us
keep the rest.
If not, let me invent one
from old scents and ceremonies.
Let me fashion prayer from a
piece of dough, roll it out,
cut in the shape of my mother,
plump, soft, flour-dusted,
the way I once played cook with clay.
Let me keep the cold healing properties
of female images,
and heated, their power
to hold fire.
Let me bake her likeness in vessels
made of earth and water.
Let me bless the flames
that turn her skin gold,
her eyes dark as raisins.
Let me bless the long wait at the oven door.
Let me bless the first warm dangerous taste of love.
Let me eat.


Readings - ”I Stop Writing the Poem” by Tess Gallagher

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I¹m still a woman.
I¹ll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I¹ll get back
to the poem. I¹ll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there¹s a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it¹s done.


Sermon “Getting Close to Mother” - Mark Harris

Last Saturday the Coming of Age kids had a car wash here at First Parish.
There have been car washes here before. We have had high school soccer teams
and others all trying to raise some funds for their activities. In the back
of my mind, I am sure I thought car washes are things we generally like
seeing kids sponsor. They are friendship building, purposeful, fun, and all
for a good cause. When the request came in to have this car wash, I didn¹t
think twice about it. I said, I¹ll speak to the bank about car flow on
Saturday morning. Great. But then the concerns slowly began to filter in -
what kind of soap are you using? what happens to the water that flows into
the drains? One of our own members, Kathy Button, was extremely helpful in
educating me about how you can have an environmentally friendly car wash. I
was also subject to a discussion with the director of the preschool that
raised some concerns. It was an issue about the water. Commercial car
washes recycle their water I was told. This is wasteful, polluting. By the
time I had finished talking to her, I felt like I was running Dow Chemical
company here, and all of Watertown would suffer from my agreement to what
only hours before I thought was an innocent youth car wash and had now
evolved into something corrupt and unethical.
After I got over my guilt of not thinking about the ramifications of
seemingly innocent events, I made a new commitment to looking at the big
picture of how conscious and vigilant I need to be working to keep the earth
clean. I also thought of the self-righteous position of my accuser. Here I
was being told I was causing a pollution problem by what I was allowing to
happen at my church, and yet it is me that carries the church¹s and
preschool¹s plastics and bottles up to my house so they can be recycled.
Then I began to think about how often I find lights left on, or doors
outside left open so the boiler can pump gallons of oil to heat the
playground. And finally, I thought about the bottled water that is brought
in, even though the school has been informed that the water out of the tap
is perfectly safe. Do you think it is environmentally friendly to have the
drinking water we think will keep our own bodies clean and pure trucked in,
while not considering the petroleum, the pollution, the environmental wear
and tear imported drinking water costs all of us? My guilt about the car
wash was lessened when I thought about others who may work hard to save
themselves, but are neglectful that their very acts are destroying the earth
just as much as my validation of a youth car wash. This small event made me
want to make the world a cleaner place, but I also do not want to be subject
to the moral superiority of another position that clearly has its own holes
in it that exude equal amounts of polluting substances.
How can we see the big picture of making the earth more livable from our
vantage point of daily experience? There were three messages from my
experience. It was good to find out what I was sanctioning could have
harmful implications. I need to find ways that I can help contribute to
making the world a safer, cleaner place. I want us to be more mindful of
sharing resources, and taking care of the earth together so that future
generations can enjoy the water and trees and animals as much as I do.
Finally, when we work together, and not in moral isolation, there is the
possibility of being more effective in making our earth more livable.
My original idea for this sermon was to talk about female images of the
divine. Because religious icons of God have been imaged as male since the
beginning of Christian history, and since leaders of Christian institutions
have also been male since the very first Peter set his rock down in Rome,
and it was declared that God had decreed male superiority from his
patriarchal heaven, women have had to carve out a small religious niche in
Christian history. This patriarchal religious and social history as it has
played out in institutions is documented with horrible consequences in the
movie The Magdalene Sisters, which I saw on DVD a few weeks ago. This film
is now a couple of years old, but it depicts the lives of three young women
who are condemned to a life in confinement in a girls reformatory
administered by nuns which seemingly does the laundry for all the priests,
monasteries and nunneries in Ireland. The girls are treated with sheer
brutality by the institution for the crimes of giving birth to a child out
of wedlock, assumed lust for the opposite sex, and for being the victim of a
rape. The only salvation is that the three main character eventually escape
this hell, and the laundries have since all been closed. What is most
sobering about this movie is the powerlessness and voicelessness of these
girls.
It is my belief that this historical female powerlessness is part of the
reason for the intercessory role of Mary in Catholic theology. A few months
back Time Magazine had a cover story that covered the increasing interest in
Mary as a religious figure and icon. It is my view that Mary fills two
religious needs for those of a more orthodox religious bent than mine. When
a faith has a male God who is a distant other, and a son who is exalted,
then you need some figure that is more human and more accessible. There is
a need to feel comforted by one who can connect you to the divine sources,
and with a Mother figure, virgin though she be, there is a deeper personal
sense of someone watching over you and taking care of you. Mary, also fills
the need for balance between male and female sources of reverence. I also
think this is why some people have an interest in ancient pagan Goddesses,
or find the DaVinci Code fascinating, or relate to the Gnostic Gospels
material where there is a Gospel of Mary. Even though some of the academic
research on ancient goddesses has proved flimsy at best, it does not negate
the human need to seek sources of being greater than ourselves to which we
can express our gratitude, feel connected to, and who will comfort us in
times of need. In the opening words Florence Weinberger speaks of creating
rituals around the power of the mother, as the likeness reminds us of what
she taught or what she gave.
While this may sound right in theory, it has obvious difficulties for
Unitarian Universalists. Most of us sitting in this room, even if we do
believe in God do not think of this source of life or love as an external
being. As much as others may bring many names to the idea of God, and we
like the idea of God as Mother to balance the old patriarchal father, most
of us do not resonate with any big daddy or mommy taking care of us. Yet
singing the hymn “Bring Many Names” may move us because it helps unfold a
memory of a mother or a father that each of us experienced. I cry nearly
every time I sing that hymn, but it has nothing to do with God. When the
Universalist part of our faith was being born late in the 18th century, the
greatest force behind its expansion was Hosea Ballou, a young circuit riding
preacher from rural New Hampshire, near where I grew up. Ballou had the
misfortune to lose his mother when he was only two years of age. It is
interesting how the God he formulated in his theology was the most loving
paternal figure ever articulated with an embrace of salvation which included
everyone. He later said that it was “his unhappy lot never to know the kind
regard and pure affection of a mother, that holiest tie of humanity.” He
said, “I do not remember her; but from all I can learn of my mother, I am
satisfied that she was of a most tender and kind disposition. But the
treasure was gone before I could realize its value.”
The treasure was gone before I could realize its value. This is the same
kind of experience that Amir has in the novel The Kite Runner, our reading
today. Amir¹s mother dies when he is young, and he never knows her beyond
some generalizations, which might sound like me saying my mother was a nice
person. Now he finds what foods she liked, the words she used, and how she
was anxious about losing her happiness. Memories of the real treasure help
him formulate a picture, and know a small piece of who this precious part of
his life was. He can begin to see her. And we see the ultimate importance
of this moment because, as it turns out, he will never learn any more from
this man. What brings Amir¹s mother to life for him are some small details
of her life. That is probably true for many of us. The grief I felt about
my mother soon after she died would come to the surface when I ate blueberry
pie and was reminded of her skills in creating the best crust ever, or in
seeing beautiful handwriting like hers, or when someone curled their hair
with their finger just as she did. The details brings the person back to our
lives in tangible ways.
This is true of the foundation our parents give to us, but especially our
mothers who are often more present when we are growing up. In Tess
Gallagher¹s poem she speaks of watching her mother fold the laundry to see
how it is done. We watch our mothers or our parents to see how things are
done. They impart their values by who they are before our eyes. While my
parents had never heard of recycling, they taught me the values of the gifts
of the earth by gardening, and canning and freezing. I loved being with
them as we prepared the fruits and vegetables that would last us all winter
long. This is part of the profound importance of a child dedication like
the one we celebrate today. The children are watching us. They see how we
are - how loving, how communicative, how much we care for the earth; not by
what we say, but by what we do. This is the way that each of you becomes
responsible for the children in our midst. Who are you to them?
And of course our parents also watched us. As I wandered into the woods,
my mother would call for me to come home. But moreover their eyes looked
with bits of pride and fear and love, as we made our way in the world;
around the corner, off to school, into the work world. They watched us
because they had cared for and comforted us. And many of us do that in turn
as they age and become infirm. This is what is so disturbing about the
movie the Magdalene Sisters, not that the Nuns are so cruel to the girls,
but that each of the girls is abandoned by their parents or by those who are
entrusted with their care. The girls are not told where or why they were
going to this horrible place, they were simply shipped out because of who
they were, or what had happened to them, and the fact that they were not to
blame was irrelevant. The opportunity to watch their parents to learn a
foundation or watch their parents caring for them was lost. Its importance
to them, to Amir and to Hosea Ballou cannot be underscored. Ballou called
out to the ground of his being to love him and take care of him forever.
Traditionally Mother¹s Day is an occasion when there is an expectation of
gratitude toward the one source of our lives who never gets the gratitude
she deserves. Of course expressions of gratitude are wonderful things, and
probably no one among us says thanks enough, not just to our mothers, but to
others who nurture us and care for us. Yet few parents probably expect
expressions of gratitude. It is not why we become parents. Perhaps we want
to teach children our ways, or carry on our values or lives, but the parent
is the fountain, and not the receptacle; the children go forth from us, and
not the other way around. They watch us to learn from us. We watch them to
take care of them. It would be nice if they said thanks, but we are going to
love them anyway. This is why abandonment is the most shocking thing in the
Magdalene Sisters.
What would it feel like to be abandoned like this? Perhaps some of us
feel that way about one of our parents. It is a hard thing to get over. If
we lose a sense of place, a sense of heritage, the details of the things we
love, then we long for them, just as Amir longs for details of his mother.
We all want to know what holds us or makes us feel safe in the world. This
is where the car wash and God imagery and mothers come together. When Ballou
said, the treasure was gone before I realized its value. This speaks of
both mothers and the earth. A theologian a few years back posited that the
earth is God¹s body. I have found this a comforting way to think of the
source of life whether you believe in God or not. There used to be a bumper
sticker which said “love your mother.” The earth has given us such gifts,
and yet we scarcely recognize those gifts in our daily living as we shop at
the store, drive in our vehicles, and watch the children grow. This earth
and its gifts hold us, nurture us, just as we might imagine a God giving
life to all creatures.
Someone once said God is in the details. And there it is in that water.
It is that water we place on the child¹s skin that we call the symbol of
life. It is the water he danced in in the womb. It is the water of the car
wash. How do we clean it? When can we drink it? Do we waste it? Will it
be gone? Will we lose the treasure before we realize its value? I suppose
it is a cliche to talk about the native Americans killing a buffalo, and
then thanking the animal for sacrificing its life so that they might live
and flourish, and then using all of its body for some useful purpose. There
is a reverence there, cliche or not, for the cycle of all of life. The
degree to which we are poisoned depends upon how much poisoning we do. And
so if we reverence the source of life as it is revealed to us is in the
details of the flowers that bloom at our feet, and in the tomatoes we
harvest with our hands, then we will ritualize how much we are fed by our
mothers who watched us see the flowers, and helped us learn how to plant
them, and by our mother, the earth who gives us the flowers with no
expectation of gratitude. And so we are gathered here on this day to help us
grow our memories, and give deepest thanks for the gifts of life and love
that we receive.
When I sing of the many Gods I don¹t believe in, a tear rolls down my cheek,
for my own mother in memory and reverence for that which nurtured for life
in many ways, and for the life giving earth and universe we inhabit, which
we are called to uphold for the mothers and fathers and children who follow.
May we carry their names forward in the small details of our lives.

Closing Words - from Sharon Olds

I am doing something I learned early to do. I am paying attention to small
beauties, whatever I have --- as if it were our duty to find things to love,
to bind ourselves to this world.