First Parish of Watertown

“Life Up From Death” by Mark W. Harris

March 29, 2009 - First Parish of Watertown

Call to Worship from Mzwakhe Mbuli

Now is the time,
To climb up the mountain
And reason against habit,
Now is the time.

Now is the time,
to renew the barren soil of nature
Ruined by the winds of tyranny,
Now is the time.

Now is the time,
to commence the litany of hope,
Now is the time . . .

Now is the time,
To give me roses, not to keep them
For my grave to come,
Give them to me while my heart beats,
Give them today
While my heart yearns for jubilee,
Now is the time . . . .

Readings Psalm 23 (Responsive # 642 )

Psalm 22 - 1-11, 17-25
 
1  My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but thou dost not answer; and by night, but find no rest. 3 Yet thou art holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. 4 In thee our fathers trusted; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. 5 To thee they cried, and were saved; in thee they trusted, and were not disappointed. 6 But I am a worm, and no man; scorned by men, and despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads; 8 "He committed his cause to the LORD; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!" 9 Yet thou art he who took me from the womb; thou didst keep me safe upon my mother's breasts. 10 Upon thee was I cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God.11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help. . . a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet--. . . 17 I can count all my bones--they stare and gloat over me; 18 they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots. 19 But thou, O LORD, be not far off! O thou my help, hasten to my aid! 20 Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog! 21 Save me from the mouth of the lion, my afflicted soul from the horns of the wild oxen! 22 I will tell of thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will praise thee: 23 You who fear the LORD, praise him! all you sons of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel! 24 For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him. 25 From thee comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.

Reading - from Remembering the Bone House by Nancy Mairs

Sermon - “Life Up From Death” Mark Harris

Most of you know that this is my last sermon before I go on sabbatical for three months. During that time I will be in residence working on a book that Andrea and I are contracted to write. There will be more information about this sabbatical in the April newsletter, and a brochure will also be available on the information table in the lobby. The subject of this last sermon is death. Now some of you might wonder if there is some symbolic meaning in that choice of topic. In addition to the finality of my time this year, most ministers also feel the need to raise this topic on a regular basis. While polite conversation may avoid sex, death and taxes, I never envisioned sermon topics to be polite, but in fact should be on issues that beckon us to reflect more deeper about the meaning of life and death, and thus are the subject of long walks, extensive conversations, or even midnight anxiety attacks that keep us enlisted on the rolls of insomniacs. Death sermons have a regular sequence in my planning for services. A few months back I was talking about the book Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes. I had not read this reflection on death then, but was intrigued by the opening line which says “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him,” and a sermon on God was the result. At the time I told a church member that once I had read the book, I would preach about death. She responded, “Oh I love your death sermons.” I didn’t know quite how to take that, but nevertheless here we are.

While the reviewer of Barnes’ book thought it “beautiful and funny,” I am less inclined to sing its praises. It was funny in places with that kind of depressive, self-deprecating, but nevertheless self-important kind of humor that I expect from Brits, but sometimes I became a little tired of his comparisons of himself to his brother. I felt like I was watching an old Smothers brothers episode, where either Tommy or Dickie would say, Mom always liked you best. What is central to his memoir are reflections on the deaths of his parents, and his particular obsession with thinking about his own death. I suppose one could view the subject as an obsession of clergy, who by occupational hazard have to articulate the meaning of death, not merely for sermonic purposes, but because memorial services and funerals are part of the job description. But the larger reality for any of us is that we do not understand life unless we understand death. And so, for me, talking with families about how to cope with the deaths of loved ones, and learning to understand our own demise may be some of the most important work we do.

Every day I pick up the Boston Globe, and turn to the obituaries. I look particularly to see if there is anyone I know, something many of us do as we age. Then I look for famous people that have intrigued me or touched my life in some way. Recently, I have seen George Kell, the Hall of Fame baseball player; Natasha Richardson, the actor and daughter of Vanessa Redgrave, who died tragically in a skiing accident, and the scholar, John Hope Franklin, who wrote so eloquently about black history and the legacy of racism. The deaths touch closer to home sometimes. My colleague in Waltham stopped by to tell me about the woman who sang in his choir, who had been murdered by her grandson, and the struggles of his congregation to comprehend this tragedy. I conducted a funeral recently for the mother of a former First Parish church friend. She died of a heart attack unexpectedly.

It is not always that way. Sometimes death is long and slow, as it was for both of my parents. For some of us, potential pain is among our greatest fears. And so we debate in our minds, which kind of death we prefer, one in which we have a chance to speak to those we are closest to, and say goodbye, or do we want it sudden and quick? My recent experiences tell me we should be ready at any time. The choice may not be ours. For all of our exercise and diet, and precautions to live a long time, we may increase the odds of survival, but there is no guarantee. No guarantee of anything. So perhaps we remember the words of our call to worship and say, now is the time. Now is the time to tell my family I love them. Now is the time to settle the disputes you want to end. Now is the time to tell your children you are proud of them, and to tell your parents that you forgive them, and convey that they did the best job they could have. If we are always ready to die, then the implication is that we can live more fully today. Perhaps that is true. We would call up those friends we have been meaning to speak to. We would look at our own “bucket list” of things to do and places to go before we die, and we would try harder to experience those.

Life does begin to work that way as we age. When we are young the nearness of death appears less relevant to life, plus our elders often make sure it seems that way. They may want to shield us from death, and so when my grandmother died when I was nine, my parents did not take me to the funeral. Yet she had moved in with us in her final months, and I had enjoyed her company for games of scrabble and stories about my father as a boy, but it seemed as though she disappeared in death, and I was left with no opportunity to say goodbye. So my first experience with facing death, is that it is something we don’t talk about. It was almost like the famous story about the Buddha, where he is kept locked away in the palace, so he will not have to see what happens to people as they age and eventually die. He can go on believing that life is endless. Once he is exposed to the reality of life, he renounces its vanities, that he might fully appreciate the transience of it all .

Nancy Mairs speaks of her love for her grandmother in Remembering the Bone House. Garm’s death means the end of an era, and of spending summers with her. Her grandmother’s death teaches her that there is this final goodbye, but she never had a chance to write her another letter to say it. So, she spends the rest of her life writing letters to loved ones. Her aunt says, “We have lost, but she has gained,” and that she is now with Nancy’s father in death. This seems to provide some comfort to Nancy. Comfort is something we seek when we feel the loss of a loved one. The church of my childhood always assured us that there was life after death to those who believed in Jesus. This was the second way I learned to talk about death, as the gateway to heaven. I wanted to believe this, but the older I became the more difficulty I encountered in accepting its veracity. For the living there is a desire to have a time where we can say goodbye, accept this loss, and find a way to go on with some kind of continuing comfort through the vehicle of memory. There is a connection between the grief we feel over the loss of loved ones, and accepting our own deaths.

A recent essay called “Death: Bad?” in the New York Times Book Review suggests that some of the ancient philosophers said it is irrational to fear death. After all, death is inevitable, and once you are in that state there is nothing to worry about. What can happen to you? Your problems are gone. Second, whether you die young or old, you are dead for all eternity, so timing matters little either. Finally, all the time before birth is of little consequence to you, so why should we be concerned about the eternity after death. There are some presumptions here we might take issue with. While being dead may not be painful, it is not exactly what we would call a desirable state to be in. Further, it seems that if living is better than death, than a longer life is preferable. And then, while you don’t remember the time before birth, you also were not created yet either. Any time lost now is time missed. The loss we feel in the wake of the death of a loved ones shows us that losing them, even if it is after a long life, is painful to us. The loss we feel over others deaths also shows us that we do not feel that our death is nothing.

The pain we feel when loved ones die is directly related to a continuing opportunity to accept our own deaths and live life more fully. When we are young we barely think about such things because we are busy constructing a life, and inventing who we are. But the death of a grandparent or parent takes away pieces of ourselves, and consequently there is a hole in our heart that will never be filled. Nancy Mairs is comforted because she has a sense that two of those pieces of her life are together in death, and so the isolated loss of her father is compensated by this death of her grandmother. As a child I memorized the 23rd Psalm. While it provides a continuity with a childhood faith, it also reminds us, adult and child alike, that we walk through the shadow of the valley of death by living at all, and like the sheep metaphor, we want some kind of staff to protect us, and especially to comfort us when confronted with illness, and the ultimate truth of our finite existence. The 23rd Psalm is a poem about a meaningful journey through life. We want a life that will continually restore our souls. We strive to live a good life. The traditional comforter may be eternal life with those we loved in this life. This is subject to severe doubts if we consider the rational possibilities about the nature of life. Death means the end of me, as I know me, and any kind of afterlife, if it is possible, is going to be very different from this one. After a person has suffered a great deal we sometimes say, their suffering is over, and now they are at peace. I have said those very words. Yet, we really don’t know what kind of state they are in. We can’t really say they are better off, even if it is true that the suffering is over. Perhaps the best way of all to understanding our own deaths is if we can get beyond self-interest, and live the larger meaning of our lives.

Right before the pastoral Psalm 23 is Psalm 22. If you grew up Christian, as I did, you memorized Psalm 23, but Psalm 22 is recognizable in a very different context. It is a context that is relevant to the coming events of Passion week, where Jesus is crucified. The Psalm begins with the words that Matthew and Mark tell us Jesus uttered on the cross. While some have speculated that he felt that God had forsaken him because he did not sense an imminent rescue, and others have said he was reciting Psalm 22, the more likely scenario is that we don’t know what he said while facing his death by execution. What seems clear is that the Gospel writers, adopted this Psalm to give substance to Jesus’ story. We not only hear the words from the cross, but also hear of him being mocked, suffering pierced hands and feet, and then the indignity of dividing his garments and casting lots for them. All the details are there. As a whole it is a prayer for deliverance from a mortal illness. The person feels as though God has given up on him. What did I do to deserve this? He recalls feeling blessed in the past, but now he is afflicted, and people are ready to divide his belongings up before he is even dead. There is in the end a glimmer of hope that he will be restored to life, and he seems to bargain for it. This is a poem that reminds us that death is not easy. We worry about pain. We worry about people’s selfishness. Even up to the moment of acceptance, if it comes, there is hope that death will not come. We want the pastoral setting of Psalm 23 - protection and comfort.

So is Psalm 22 the reality of confronting our own deaths, and Psalm 23 the answer? If Psalm 22 is the reality, then the rational response to the specter of non existence is fear. Here I agree with Julian Barnes. When I wake in the middle of the night, I cannot convince myself that death is something not to worry about, as easy as falling out of bed. Yes, it is like falling, but it is falling onto the floor permanently, and never getting up. There is much wisdom in the Buddhist tradition to let go of those things that attach us to this world. In that faith, a story is told about the monk Baddhiya. One day during sitting meditation, he cried out, “Oh, my happiness!” Other monks thought he was talking about material things that once brought him pleasure. When the Buddha questioned him about this, he said, that he was recalling a time when he was a political governor, attended by servants and protected by bodyguards. During that time he said he always lay awake with fear. I was afraid that people would steal my wealth. I was afraid of being assassinated. Now, he said, I am free, because I have nothing to lose. I enjoy every moment. “That is why I cried out, Oh My Happiness!” Like the call to worship, the story reminds us that now is the time to contemplate what truly makes us happy, and how we must be nourished in the present moment, as material things are merely passing fancies. As my father used to say, “you can’t take it with you.” And yet my siblings ended up fighting over those very material things of this world. Their very real fear of death remained a fear that was revealed in their grasping for the things of this world. Julian Barnes tells a story of the emptiness of finding heaven in self-fulfillment. A successful business friend of his was determined to arrange all the particulars of his own death, including all the funeral planning in advance. He even admitted that he wanted to succeed at death. When we are always proving ourselves even unto death, it becomes impossible to live in the moment, and we only see the importance of the self, and not what our contribution might be to the larger whole. My loss of those family material things has reminded me to this day that I didn’t need any of that wealth to enjoy my life, and that fear ruined the one sustaining thing my siblings had, the love we once knew in relationship with each other.

Fear of death afflicts us all, but we can reduce that fear, when we do live for what is eternal in this moment, and when we live a life where self-concern is not our highest interest. I have been told that women are more comfortable with death than men. Sometimes this is said to be true because women are more in touch with the natural processes of the earth and their bodies than men are. Traditionally the male is a sky god, and the female is an earth god. It may be true that women are more likely to understand the natural processes of life and death, and find death something to be accepted rather than feared. But I also believe that the traditional role of women as care giver and mothers makes it so that their lives contributes to a greater life that survives them - the family, their children. By doing this we contribute to the future beyond ourselves. Charles Hartshorne, the UU theologian called this “contributionism.” This means that we give more to life, when we give to others. People who are miserable, and given nothing to the larger continuation of life, are likely to fear death most of all. This is not to say there is an immortality of deeds, but rather that the larger contribution to living that we make, will make living more abundant for us, and those who follow. Those who follow then must then heed our call to live more abundantly.

I learned the 23rd Psalm in the church of my childhood. While I don’t follow the church’s beliefs about God, the Bible or its message of redemption any more, I do know that that ancient Psalm is something that still brings me comfort. Maybe it is from a time when I felt cared for and safe, but it is that kind of balm that stays with us throughout our lives when illness or even death threatens. But those words also had to do with home. One thing most of us experience is that as we age we see our parents in the mirror, in our actions, and in our words. As much as we rebelled against them, or style ourselves as different, there is something enduring in us of them. I think Nancy Mairs was right in knowing that our loved ones who are deceased are together in memory, and it comforts us to know they are not alone in that way. It may also be a bit of a comfort to us now that they wait for us when our time comes. They are part of that prior contributionism that beckons us forth to contribute to life in our time, even if we know it has a finite end. We were formed in life by all those who loved us and taught us and guided us, and so when we think of our end, we do feel the need to be reconciled and even redeemed by those same people. When we lay down to sleep, we want to be at peace, and giving our heart and soul to others will bring us that peace like no other action we can perform in this life.

Julian Barnes says, “We live broadly according to a religion we no longer believe in.” Psalm 23 still comforts me even though my childhood faith is gone. While we may move away from our parents in life, Barnes says, they reclaim us in death. So our parents and other loved ones are still alive and speaking to us and in us, and we still cry some times that they are gone. We live what good they taught us, and let go all that might cause shame or hurt. We die as we live. One of my parents died holding on and saying little, and the other was grateful for the good life he enjoyed, and perhaps we struggle with both. It is hard to let go of this beautiful earth and the people we love, but in reflection, we can also be grateful for all we are given. Love and death, living and dying are two sides of an equation. There is a land of the living, and a land of the dead, Thornton Wilder once wrote, and the only bridge between them is love. It is in the nature of things that we return to the earth, and become part of its renewal, too. We are living with the dying and death every day, and that is truly why NOW must be the time. We must let that voice of memory speaks through us now of love, of friendship, of the desire for justice, of humor, of struggle, of striving to live more abundantly. You are what you have contributed, and dying will come easier when you have lived with a larger life of contributions to the world, to the community, and to each other. What we should always remember is that life rises up from death. That has always been true in the life of the earth, in evolution. We die, so that others might live. That is an immortality worth dying for.


Closing Words - from St. Francis

God, make us instruments of your peace,
where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine master,
may we not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving, that we receive;
and in pardoning that we are pardoned.
It is in dying that become part of all that is eternal.

“What Goes Up, Must Come Down” Mark W. Harris

March 15, 2009 - First Parish of Watertown

Call to Worship - from “Compensation” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. The dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty.

Reading - “Seesaws” by Samuel Hazo
 
The bigger the tomb, the smaller the man.
The weaker the case, the thicker the brief.
The deeper the pain, the older the wound.
The graver the loss, the drier the tears.

The truer the shot, the slower the aim.
The quicker the kiss, the sweeter the taste.
The broader the crime, the vaguer the guilt.
The louder the price, the cheaper the ring.

The steeper the climb, the sheerer the slide.
The higher the odds, the shrewder the bet.
The rarer the chance, the blinder the risk.
The colder the snow, the greener the spring.

The braver the bull, the wiser the cape.
The shorter the joke, the surer the laugh.
The sadder the tale, the dearer the joy.
The longer you live, the fewer your years.


Sermon - “What Goes Up, Must Come Down” Mark W. Harris

Seesaws speak to us of balance. You go up on one side, dangling in the air, as the person on the other side, squats their legs down as they sit on the ground, and then they push off, sending themselves aloft, as you go down. Up and down again and again. In Camden, Maine at Lake Megunticook, they have a seesaw, and when my boys check it out in the summertime, I go back in time to my own school yard playground. That green wooden board filled with splinters needed to be on a balanced even keel at first, so both you and your friend could climb on board, and then the heavier child, usually me, could send the other up in the air. What goes up, must come down. Sometimes you are up, and sometimes down, an emotional paradigm for life, seeking a balance. Sometimes the seesaw was fun, when you were perfectly balanced with another child. Sometimes the weight differential made it difficult, and up and down, became up and more up, or down and stuck down. Sometimes kids would try to be mean, and try to flip their friends right off the seesaw, like when you were up and your supposed friend jumped off sending you crashing. But the mean kids did not always get away with this. Sometimes they jumped off and the flying board caught them on the chin or at least hit their leg. This we always thought was just retribution for their mean act. Look what it got you. Serves you right.

We like to think that things will even out, especially when it seems that everything is going poorly. This week I conducted a funeral service for a woman who had a severely handicapped brother who died young, and then later she discovered she had an undiagnosed bleeding disorder, then after the birth of three children, she got divorced. Working two or three jobs to support these children, she eventually contracted hepatitis. Everything seemed to be constantly up in the air medically, financially and emotionally, one beget another. When did it ever become balanced? Was it in the simple things she enjoyed? Or in the love, strength and spirit of endurance she imparted to those who followed? Or perhaps it never did balance out, and she simply had a tough life, but did the best she could to get by and raise her children in the only way she knew how. I think we want to believe like Emerson that there is balance in the universe, because life can deals us so many emotional and physical turmoils that we have to live with hope that things will get better, or even feel some measure of gratitude when there is a little peace after the storm.

Emerson spoke of polarity where one side strikes and the other repels. It is the balance of life we see in male and female, yin and yang, odds and evens. We often see this in relationships where one partner is the more emotional or sentimental and the other the more rational or practical. Perhaps it is true in other things we undertake, like our weakness in one area of work is compensated for by the strengths of another. Emerson implies that there is a wholeness to everything that we sometimes do not recognize or see. This means that every crime is punished. Even if it seems like the bad guy gets away with it, there is a loss of connection with his soul. Whatever he has escaped will attack him in another place. He says we must be careful lest we think that one side of our nature, the sweet is great, while the other side, the bitter, is worthless. And it is true that sometimes our kindness needs a dose of toughness, and our rigidity, some levity. As great as the successes may appear, replete with power, fame, and wealth, there is a price to be paid. Every point of pride is injurious to us in some way. There is a crack in every thing God has made, Emerson says. We must accept both sides of our nature if we are to live at peace in the world.

One of my students was recently telling me about “Polarity Management”, an organizational framework whereby rather than solving a problem with an either / or solution you accept an ongoing, natural tension between the poles and rather than allowing that difference to be destructive or debilitating, you manage it, make use of it and channel it into a creative synergy. So as a church the humanists don’t reject the theists, but find a common language that allows us both to find reverence in something greater than ourselves, or perhaps in governance we come to see how a stronger organization will in the long run affirm the individual strengths of all the people and not just those who are the loudest or most powerful individuals among us. If we can balance this polarity, then as a religious community we have managed to create a deep faith because we have moved beyond the framework of dogmatic control to an acceptance of the deep polarities in all of life. As Emerson so wisely stated, “The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out others.”

One of the most obvious metaphors for the emotional state of up and down is that of the elevator. In an article in the New Yorker almost a year ago, Nick Paumgarten, said that the elevator is underrated and overlooked. Along with steel frames, it is one thing that made tall buildings possible. Back when I worked for the UUA, people used to complain if the elevator was out of order for a day, and that was only six floors of stair climbing. Years ago it was the inspiration for a sermon on manners. My office stood right outside the elevator, and the building manager was next to me. Typically, ill mannered folk would immediately try to get on when the elevator doors first cracked open, and invariably someone was aboard. At those moments the building manager would cry out, “In this country we let them off, first.”

We usually think of elevator rides as being quick. It was popular among UUs a couple of years ago to create elevator speeches about what Unitarian Universalism is. Can you describe this free, non-creedal faith in the two minutes its takes to ride to the top of a building? I thought this whole process a little silly, because as I have said many times before, it is not a faith that is meant to be codified, but rather it needs to be lived. Nevertheless, there are other aspects of elevator riding that make this speech composing difficult. These days there are high speed elevators. When I am at Mass General hospital, I can barely say my name by the time I reach the sixth floor, and then on the way down to the car park, a recorded message is blaring in my ear about how I need to pay first, and then retrieve my car. There are other problems. I, like many others, do not like to ride in elevators. There is high anxiety about being trapped in one, and who likes to be in such close quarters with strangers? Most of you have heard my paranoia about the elevator here at First Parish, and how slow it is, if it is operational at all. I send things like big boxes and oversize TVs down the elevator, but not me. And yet, the elevator here is a source of pride because it signifies how important it was and is to everybody that we be completely accessible. One thing that always appealed to me about elevators is that television shows and movies always depicted it as a place for romantic liaisons. I am not sure why, but I know when I was a teenager, I wanted to ride on elevators if I visited a tall building. It seemed liked something exciting could occur there, even if I had no idea how to make it happen.

Perhaps the idea of a stolen kiss balances the exasperating parts of elevator rides that seem to plague many of us. First, there is the problem of the elevator that never seems to arrive, even after you have pushed the button 100 times. There are also phantom stops when the elevator arrives, and there is no one there. There is the problem of dreading your time there because there is nothing to do except experience some measure of dis-ease. That is the reason elevator music was invented. I learned in that elevator article that door-close buttons don’t actually work. They are just there to make us think we have some measure of control, and because the door eventually closes, after we have pushed it four or five times, we think it does work. The anxiety level in an elevator is raised by many other factors. Once you make a choice you cannot change your mind. This is where you are going, and the only other solution is to push multiple other buttons like the child who likes to see the lights come on, or start all over again. Finally, there is the social engagement taboo of being there with complete strangers. Ever watch how people shift in all directions to avoid eye contact, and it seems no one should ever speak another word to anyone. This makes slow moving elevators even more exasperating. Such is life on an elevator.

What elevators reveal or better yet don’t reveal is how much social anxiety and fear lurks below the surface of our lives. How does the up and down of the elevator balance out? Well, we try to find things that make it less uncomfortable. We may say that are trying to be “green” and thus we avoid riding altogether to save energy. We trust the safety of our own legs, while foregoing the anxiety of getting stuck, or speaking to strangers. When we do ride, we push buttons, we look away, we are impatient that it does not come, and yet it is darn faster than waiting for a 71 bus to go to Cambridge and back. Elevators, as an up and down metaphor, reveal our desire for balance in our lives, but even if only briefly, the car that takes us up in tall buildings mostly makes us feel down, anxious about timing and evoking claustrophobia, or even depressed, about social isolation and lack of control. Yet in reality the elevator is usually fast and reliable. Why can’t I just meditate this anxiety away, and calmly wait for it to be over?

Recently in the New York Times, Judith Warner wrote a blog entry on Being and Mindfulness, which I found helpful. She says that mindfulness is all the rage now in psychotherapy as a way to stay calm, manage anger and live sanely. A few weeks ago in a sermon Andrea spoke about a friend who meditated, while ignoring her plaintive ringing of the door buzzer when she was locked out in the cold. The implication was that while meditating may make you present to yourself, and the inner harmony of creation, it also helps you check out from what is surrounding you. Warner reminds us that mindfulness is suppose to bring people together, and you do so by getting in touch with your essential humanness - your body, your emotions, your thoughts, and these help you connect to all of humanity. Yet its focus on self-acceptance can make you self-absorbed. This new and improved self that has everything under control and stays in the moment is a person who, she says, may lose their edge. Warner says it is that little bit of raggedness that makes up the heart of what makes us human. It is that crack in every one of us that Emerson speaks of. Riding on elevators, we may feel that anxiety, that emotional up and down. Then Warner goes on to speak of how a friend had expressed fears about the recession, and Warner tried to tap into her calm centeredness by telling her friend to stay with her feelings. Her friend wrote back asking what happened to the real Judy. We have shouted at each other for 43 years, and now you calmly tell me to stay with my feelings.

It may be a surprise to you, but I work on balancing emotions all the time. Many of us expend much energy on coping with the storm in our brains. Ministers are probably not suppose to say this about strong emotion because our projected image is that we are the source of calm in turmoil, or the non anxious presence in a crisis. Professionally that is who I try to be, but it does not change what I feel. Warner’s larger point is that those who experience their emotions so intensely like to know that there are others in the world who struggle to balance their emotions. To get rid of them would mean a world that is terribly dull. It is selfish I suppose to say that we want to express our ragged edges in front of or to others, because they may be hurt by the anger or frustrations that are reflections of the self that has been developed through genetic history and years of family life. Like Warner some of these feelings make me feel connected to those I have loved. In my sermons I tell stories of my father and mother partly because of the emotional baggage I struggle with as a person. The edges I received from them either through nature or nurture surface in me, and it is a way for me to understand myself, and human relationships, and also how I am part of a larger struggling humanity. Your cracks, whatever they may be, are those range of feelings that you have - anger, fear, joy, love, and we all learn or at least try to establish some sense of emotional balance through these struggles. D. H. Lawrence says the soul is a dark forest, and sometimes strange gods come forth from that forest. We must have the courage to try to understand what is in our dark forest, and I think sometimes we try to mask those feelings for fear of exposing that forest.

Balance is something we usually think of as a good thing. As someone born under the sign of Libra, I appreciate the scales, one who can see both sides and weigh the just outcome. Most of us think of balance as a way to hear all sides of an argument; it is tolerant and fair minded. And yet increasingly balance can be boring like the person who has lost their edge. In fact balance can be a sort of censorship. Fundamentalists say we should balance science curriculum with creationism, but that is simply a way to control the discussion and suppress ideas they do not like. It is no balance. Even those liberals who argue for consensus say they want something that makes everyone happy, and yet consensus often makes no one happy, and may also be a way to control dissent. And, finally it may also be a way to control strong emotion. Where is the room to argue persuasively for a strongly felt point of view one way or the other, when your only goal is the calm, balanced response? This might be a way to avoid true feelings.

The Taoist tradition might give us some guidance in finding balance with that mixture of emotions we experience. This approach is simple: accept what is in front of you without pretending the situation to be other than it is. This anger or anxiety is real. We work with this natural thing rather than against it, and so accept ourselves as we really are, and don’t pretend otherwise. There is a Taoist story told about Chuang-Tzu, an ancient sage. It seems he was sitting and fishing in the river one day, when two messengers of the king appeared and asked him to become a high official in the royal court. He heard their offer, and without even looking their way he replied, “I heard that the king possess a sacred tortoise which has been dead for three thousand years. The king has it wrapped in exquisite silk and keeps it in an ornately carved box where it is stored in an especially holy part of the ancestral temple. Tell me - would the tortoise rather be dead with its bones preserved and honored, or would it rather be alive with its tail dragging in the mud? The two messengers agreed that it would rather be alive with its tail dragging in the mud. “Be off with you then,’ said Chuang-Tzu, “I prefer to drag my tail in the mud.” I suppose you might construe this to mean that we should let our strong feelings alone, and express them in their natural state. I am afraid this would not give any relief to those people and their families who suffer from the effects of disruptive emotional imbalances. But that is my very point. Often with children there is a war between opposing camps on how to diagnose and treat those with terrible mood and behavior disorders. Some people seem to want to deny the very existence of the natural state of these disorders, and may imply that they exist because of parents who do not love or discipline enough. And even if these people understand the ups and down of the children’s lives, they may not accept that they must be treated, because the great swings put everyone at risk, both the person who suffers and those who love them.

Balance becomes possible once we have a place where we can talk about these issues, and recognize their role in our lives. Many of us must struggle with a tail that is dragging in the mud. In some ways I think this marks some of the success of Christianity as a faith. Jesus is a passionate soul, who deals with issues of legitimacy and poverty and oppression. He is human. He knocks over benches in the temple of those who are dishonorable money changers, he irrationally curses a fig tree, and he says there are times to carry a sword. He has questions about where he comes from and what happened to him, and he wants to know what he is suppose to do in the world. His story also reminds us of how much support parents need when they try to understand and find relief for moods that range up and down. It is important that parents not blame themselves, and they must always trust their instincts about their own child. Ultimately we must find spiritual solace with those who are supportive, not critical. Finding balance means
planning how to avoid stressful times, encouraging the development of strengths and continuing understanding and patience. Moodiness or not, these are ways any parent can find some balance in our daily lives.

Jesus has trouble finding balance, and where he is most able to find it, is among the religious disciples he gathers around him. That is why we have churches. We want a place of emotional equilibrium for all these ups and down that tear at our lives. We want to bring children into this fellowship because we say here we will take care of you at least in the spiritual sense, so that your cracks, your struggling with a tail in the mud does not divorce you from a place where you are loved, accepted, and embraced. There are dark forests in each of us. We struggle to balance them. Life is more seesaw than emotional balance. We try to find ways to achieve balance through treatment, through physical activity, through friends, through community. We do that balancing best not by struggling in silence alone, but by being together in community where we support each other in those struggles. Here we learn that others have walked in our shoes. Here we learn that others struggle for balance, and experience the same crazy making ups and downs, and maybe together we will find a way to ease the struggle and find peace, or a little balance because of our care or love or understanding.

Closing Words from D. H. Lawrence

This is what I believe:
That I am I.
That my soul is a dark forest.
That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into
the clearing of my known self, and then go back.
That I must have the courage to let them come and go.
That I will never let humankind put anything over me, but
that I will try always to recognize and submit to the
gods in me and the gods in other men and women.
There is my creed.

“Wishful Thinking” Mark W. Harris

March 8, 2009 - First Parish of Watertown

Call to Worship - from Carl Sandburg, The People, Yes

Between the infinite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prisms of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.

Reading - from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

(His sister is putting Pennyroyal lotion on William) 

  I had to cast two or three straightforward looks at William to reassure myself that he really looked happy and expectant in spite of his melancholy circumstances, and was not being overtaken by retribution. The brother and sister seemed to be on delightful terms with each other for once, and there was something of cheerful anticipation in their morning talk. I was reminded of Medea's anointing Jason before the great episode of the iron bulls, but to-day William really could not be going up country to see a railroad for the first time. I knew this to be one of his great schemes, but he was not fitted to appear in public, or to front an observing world of strangers. As I appeared he essayed to rise, but Mrs. Todd pushed him back into the chair.
 
  "Set where you be till it dries on," she insisted. "Land sakes, you 'd think he 'd get over bein' a boy some time or 'nother, gettin' along in years as he is. An' you 'd think he 'd seen full enough o' fish, but once a year he has to break loose like this, an' travel off way up back o' the Bowden place—far out o' my beat, 't is—an' go a trout fishin'!"
 
  Her tone of amused scorn was so full of challenge that William changed color even under the green streaks.
 
  "I want some change," he said, looking at me and not at her. "'T is the prettiest little shady brook you ever saw."

  "If he ever fetched home more 'n a couple o' minnies, 't would seem worth while," Mrs. Todd concluded, putting a last dab of the mysterious compound so perilously near her brother's mouth that William flushed again and was silent.
 
  A little later I witnessed his escape, when Mrs. Todd had taken the foolish risk of going down cellar. There was a horse and wagon outside the garden fence, and presently we stood where we could see him driving up the hill with thoughtless speed. Mr. Todd said nothing, but watched him affectionately out of sight.
 
  "It serves to keep the mosquitoes off," she said, and a moment later it occurred to my slow mind that she spoke of the pennyroyal lotion. "I don't know sometimes but William 's kind of poetical," she continued, in her gentlest voice. "You 'd think if anything could cure him of it, 't would be the fish business."
 
  It was only twenty minutes past six on a summer morning, but we both sat down to rest as if the activities of the day were over. Mrs. Todd rocked gently for a time, and seemed to be lost, though not poorly, like Macbeth, in her thoughts. At last she resumed relations with her actual surroundings. "I shall now put my lobster on. They 'll make us a good supper," she announced. "Then I can let the fire out for all day; give it a holiday, same 's William. You can have a little one now, nice an' hot, if you ain't got all the breakfast you want. Yes, I 'll put the lobsters on. William was very thoughtful to bring 'em over; William is thoughtful; if he only had a spark o' ambition, there be few could match him."
 
  This unusual concession was afforded a sympathetic listener from the depths of the kitchen closet. Mrs. Todd was getting out her old iron lobster pot, and began to speak of prosaic affairs. I hoped that I should hear something more about her brother and their island life, and sat idly by the kitchen window looking at the morning glories that shaded it, believing that some flaw of wind might set Mrs. Todd's mind on its former course. Then it occurred to me that she had spoken about our supper rather than our dinner, and I guessed that she might have some great scheme before her for the day.

  When I had loitered for some time and there was no further word about William, and at last I was conscious of receiving no attention whatever, I went away. It was something of a disappointment to find that she put no hindrance in the way of my usual morning affairs, of going up to the empty little white schoolhouse on the hill where I did my task of writing. I had been almost sure of a holiday when I discovered that Mrs. Todd was likely to take one herself; we had not been far afield to gather herbs and pleasures for many days now, but a little later she had silently vanished. I found my luncheon ready on the table in the little entry, wrapped in its shining old homespun napkin, and as if by way of special consolation, there was a stone bottle of Mrs. Todd's best spruce beer, with a long piece of cod line wound round it by which it could be lowered for coolness into the deep schoolhouse well. . . .
  
  So the day did not begin very well, and I began to recognize that it was one of the days when nothing could be done without company. The truth was that my heart had gone trouting with William, but it would have been too selfish to say a word even to one's self about spoiling his day. If there is one way above another of getting so close to nature that one simply is a piece of nature, following a primeval instinct with perfect self-forgetfulness and forgetting everything except the dreamy consciousness of pleasant freedom, it is to take the course of a shady trout brook. The dark pools and the sunny shallows beckon one on; the wedge of sky between the trees on either bank, the speaking, companioning noise of the water, the amazing importance of what one is doing, and the constant sense of life and beauty make a strange transformation of the quick hours. I had a sudden memory of all this, and another, and another. I could not get myself free from "fishing and wishing."
 
  At that moment I heard the unusual sound of wheels, and I looked past the high-growing thicket of wild-roses and straggling sumach to see the white nose and meagre shape of the Caplin horse; then I saw William sitting in the open wagon, with a small expectant smile upon his face.
 
  "I 've got two lines," he said. "I was quite a piece up the road. I thought perhaps 't was so you 'd feel like going."

  There was enough excitement for most occasions in hearing William speak three sentences at once. Words seemed but vain to me at that bright moment. I stepped back from the schoolhouse window with a beating heart. The spruce-beer bottle was not yet in the well, and with that and my luncheon, and Pleasure at the helm, I went out into the happy world. The land breeze as blowing, and, as we turned away, I saw a flutter of white go past the window as I left the schoolhouse and my morning's work to their neglected fate.
 
 
Sermon - “Wishful Thinking” Mark W. Harris

I was reading a short story the other day called “Greatness Strikes Where it Pleases” looking for a reading for this service. I didn’t choose a reading from there , but I was struck by one line about trees from that story. “The trees are so happy, when the wind comes. That gives them something to do.” This was a thought from a boys mind, but it reminded me of my own mind many years ago. As many of you know I grew up on a mostly forested homestead of 65 acres. Walking among trees, climbing them, and gathering their sap were all common activities for me. I suppose I felt like I knew the trees personally, and wondered about their feelings. This was especially true in winter when I would look out and see their ice encased branches or witness them being battered by howling winds. I sometimes would say, those birches are huddling together for some protection from the cold. When my parents planted a row of weeping willows at the end of our driveway, I watched them grow, and wondered if they truly were weeping, and what might have made them feel so sad and hang low. I played mostly by myself as a child, and the trees were among my friends. So my wish for the trees was that they could talk, and tell me about themselves, and I also wondered what they wished for. I am sure I imagined they wanted winter to pass, like me, so that they could become clothed in green once again, and provide shade and cooling breezes in summertime. I imagined them happier then, not cold and shivering, but joyful and delighted to wave at all other living creatures.

I suppose as children we all learn to wish for lots of things. My boys are constantly making up lists of what they want for Christmas, and then once that passes, it becomes a birthday wish list. We go through life with lots of wishes. As a child, I remember wishing I could be a professional baseball player. And later I wished I could be a rock star. I swung a lot of bats, and I grew my hair long, but those wishes never came true. Wishes like those are pure fantasy in most cases, but some people through some combination of luck and talent become stars. Sometimes we wish that we looked differently. The culture gives clear messages, especially to women that there are certain standards of beauty. Perhaps that is represented by the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Barbie dolls that blonde impossibly shaped caricature of female perfection. In Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye she shows us how a black girl with dark eyes, wishes for those white icons of beauty - blue eyes. Young men often want to be tall. One of my friends from college was so focused on his wish to be taller, he used to hang from the heating pipes thinking he would stretch himself out. Unfortunately he only encouraged his friends to laugh uproariously at him. What we love and what we think we are suppose to love and long to be, provide us with endless opportunities for wishing.

Some people are willing to act on those those wishes for changing how they look. We have plastic surgery and botox and tummy tucks for wrinkles and excess flesh. The wish is fulfilled if we have the money to afford it. There is apparently an epidemic of nose jobs in Iran, of all places. In a couple of weeks Belmont World Film is going to show a documentary film called, “Nose, Iranian Style,” which depicts how young Iranians, who are generally discouraged from modeling personal expressions of vanity are changing their noses to mimic Western styles they see in fashion magazines. Iran is the world leader in rhinoplasty with 60-70,000 operations a year.

If wish fulfillment is something people act upon to enhance personal appearance, some scholars would argue that it is also central when it comes to the creation of religious faith. We create a God who can fulfill all of our wishes in response to human feelings of helplessness and guilt. We wish for a quick answer to all of our questions about life and its meaning and direction. That need for security in the midst of uncertainty, and forgiveness in response to misdeeds is boundless in a God who can give us unending love and eternal salvation. As a child I certainly experienced an understanding of prayer as a lesson in wish fulfillment. It was a quid pro quo of me being the good boy, while God would fulfill all of my wishes for toys, baseball victories and that holiday wish list, a tradition that Santa’s annual letter provided a perfect vehicle for.
We wish there were coherent meaning to life, and not the seeming randomness of Darwin’s Natural Selection and in our own lives where our search for moral relevancy sometimes seems to feel like no good deed goes unpunished. We wish there were an eternal existence of continuing growth and education towards moral perfection that the early Unitarians envisioned, and not the seeming end of personal existence as we know it when death comes.

And yet a faith that was pure wish fulfillment would certainly not give us much chance to develop our souls or provide much depth to life. Without doubt, where would we face the challenge of creating meaning in our lives? With a perfect God offering a perfect life, where could we exercise any opportunities to change, grow, risk or love? A wish fulfilled religion is pretty boring. And besides, we know from experience, that this life cannot be grounded in illusionary wishes because even if religious beliefs in God or the afterlife are based in some truth, they are truths that will forever be unknown to us, and remain mysteries. We can wish that God existed, or we can act as if God exists by how we live our lives. We can wish that life is eternal, or we can live now by acting as if we have but one life to be compassionate towards others, enjoy our one gift, and leave a legacy of peaceful relations and gentle stewardship of the earth for those who follow. Even as we struggled as children with wish fulfillment religions that promised much, we also learned at our parent’s knees ancient rhymes of Mother Goose that show us that sometimes wishing is useless, and that our lives will be more fulfilling if we act. Remember:
“If wishes were horses then beggars would ride, If turnips were swords I'd have one by my side.
If 'ifs' and 'ands' were pots and pans, There would be no need for tinkers' hands!” We are the tinkers. We are the wish fulfillers.

There are also negative kinds of wishes. These may be things we regret doing or saying, but nevertheless, our feelings of remorse or guilt are often couched in the language of wishes. Some of these may be everyday kinds of lessons we learn about our jobs or our relationships or parenting. Many aspects of these parts of our lives are on the job training. So when a minister ends up doing flood control in the basement, or dealing with difficult renters, we may remark, I wish they had taught me this in seminary. Of course many practical aspects of any job are never taught in school. With all the anguish of a failed relationship, we may end up saying, I wish I had never married him or her. Whenever I have said this, I usually catch myself, because without that first marriage, I would not have my oldest son. In any case, while we might wish something did not happen, once it has, it becomes fodder for the development of our soul, and wishes for changing past errors of judgment are better left being accepted and let go of as the years pass. We seek to behave differently in our new relationships, and try to forgive ourselves and move forward. Last summer Charles Van Doren, wrote an article in the New Yorker, called “All The Answers.” Van Doren was literally given the answers in the 1950’s quiz show, “Twenty-one,” and later fired from NBC for his actions once they were exposed. He paid the price by following the producer’s script as to who would win and when. He tells in the article of a conversation with his father before the scandal was general news, where Van Doren broke down into tears. His father realized “he was caught up in something you may not really want.” His father recognized he was often not happy, and suggested that perhaps he should turn his back on it. Van Doren responded that that was not possible. “I’m afraid there is no way out anymore.” . . . I wish I were free to do this.” He must tell his father he wishes it were not so, but he ended up losing everything, and by then the only thing he could be thankful for was a new job, and surviving, which he did. People sometimes remind us of being careful of those things we wish for, like having children I always wished for, but then saying, “I wish I were a younger Dad.”

Wishes and their fulfillment are really about opportunities. When I said to my father after the break up of a relationship, “I wish you had warned me about her.” He said, “you wouldn’t have listened, you had to learn for yourself.” There was an opportunity to learn about myself and my relationships with those I love. When we say, I wish you had told me about that job. We want our friend to keep us informed of opportunities. We may wish for improved communication, but we act to tell them of that wish. Wishes are really ways that we envision fulfilling ourselves. We wish to have a child because we believe that part of the way we will grow as a people and contribute to the world is by having and nurturing children. Often when we say to our parents, I wish you had told me how much work this parenting really is, it is not so much a wish that they told us how hard it was way back then, but a plea today to connect with them and deepen the relationship so that we know one another as fellow parents. Wishes are chances to listen more to each other, share more with each, and acknowledge our own misgivings and weaknesses more to each other. We often have such a hard time showing any sign of weakness, that we may be afraid to say to another what we wish for, but if they know, then there is an opportunity for fulfillment.

I have spent most of my career in one kind of profession, that of minister. Along the way I have had these little part time jobs to support me while I was in school. In recent years I have felt very lucky because I have been able to not only live out my vocation as minister, but also to practice a vocation that I also wished for when I was younger. I get to practice my passions in ministry and teaching. This is an opportunity that I wished for for a while. Then because I wanted it so badly, I began to realize that wishing for it would not make the employer approach me. Even saying I wanted it was not producing results, and so I acted upon the wish by telling the person who held the position that I was the right person for the job. He agreed. My wish came true. There is a lovely children's book called Rata-Pata-Scata-Fata, about a boy in Jamaica who says these magic words to make his wishes come true, and even teaches his mother how to do it. And so when she tells him to fetch a fish from across town at the bay, he wishes it would appear at his door, and sure enough a fish falls off a wagon going by his house, and his wish comes true. A wind blows down the tamarinds he is suppose to pick, and a rain cloud fills the dry barrel. He is convinced that his magic words make his wish true, but he is just darn lucky. Or perhaps the magic is in the relationship between the boy and his mother, and the love they feel.

As minister here I have lots of wishes for the church, but I cannot make them happen by wishing they were so. I need your passions to help us all formulate what we want this church to be and what our dreams about it are. I have become a little concerned this year that folks could feel as though the needs of the church have begun to feel like work, not in the sense of fulfilling passions, but in the sense of drudgery. I don’t want church to feel like the obligatory jobs to be done. I want it to feel like an opportunity to grow spiritually and emotionally and socially. I want it to be a place where many of you can practice your passions. Today we have passed out a talent survey. It is the very first step in trying to discern not what our best guess is of what you want from the church, but rather a way to hear from you what kinds of things you love to do, and could bring to this community with some degree of passion. What are your wishes that you can help create and fulfill here? These are opportunities for relationship, for expressing talents, for making a difference in someone’s life.

One of the places I go to be spiritually filled is the Maine coast. More than a hundred years ago Sarah Orne Jewett wrote in beautiful language of people who had a quiet kind of passion and love for the place and for each other in The Country of the Pointed Firs. Here in our reading the narrator, a writer from the city succumbs to the desire to combine wishing and fishing. She neglects the work for the day that feels like drudgery, so that she can try out going fishing with William, a journey that will help her forget herself, and discover some degree of freedom, and create a deeper relationship, too. I want us to reflect deeper about going fishing together. Jesus, as you may remember, liked this fishing metaphor. What would you like to go fishing with, and who would you like to do it with? What kind of wishes do you have about fulfilling your passions, meeting people, and building a better world, and how might we carry those out together right here? This is not wishful thinking that won’t come true. This is Wish Full thinking, fulfilled through your expressed wishes of all you want us to be, then acting on it, so that our wishes come true.


Closing Words - “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

“Putting in Everything” - Mark W. Harris

March 1, 2009 - First Parish of Watertown

Opening Words - from Mark 12: 41-44

And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the multitude putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. and a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which made a penny. And he called his disciples to him, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty, has put in everything she had, her whole living.”

Story - “The Buried Treasure”, a Sufi Story from Doorways to the Soul

Reading - “The Gift”

Sermon -

Some years ago when I worked at Unitarian Universalist headquarters in Boston, my job as archivist meant that I frequently helped people who were doing research on local history. At the time there was a woman who was writing the history of Unitarianism in Montana. This would be fine if buffalo could utter the words “free search for truth” and light chalices, but sadly that is not the case. In other words, Montana has never exactly been a fertile field for liberals to sow. A colleague of mine once illustrated this paucity of members by telling the story of the death of an elderly Unitarian in Montana, and the problem this presented to his widow who wanted a service conducted when there were no liberal ministers for several hundred miles around. The nearest church to their home was a Methodist congregation, and so the widow decided she would ask the local minister if she could conduct the service. The Methodist minister immediately agreed, but then wondered if this might be a violation of church protocol. Deciding not to take any chance, she called her bishop, to see if she was breaking any rule by taking the service. Though she did not speak to the bishop directly, she left a message asking for permission to bury the Unitarian. The next day a telegram from the bishop arrived at her church. It read: “Bury as many Unitarians as you can.”

For centuries Unitarians and Universalists have had a reputations for being radicals in religious matters, and this has also been extended to political and social questions as well. Just two years ago US Representative Pete Stark, a Unitarian Universalist from Fremont, CA crossed what some called "one of the last frontiers" in politics when he publicly acknowledged that he does not believe in a supreme being. One political commentator said, that just a generation ago, "you couldn't go anywhere near'' such a statement. It "would have been political suicide. Time will tell whether this is a case of the Bay Area being far out front -- or merely far out.'' At the time Stark was behind a bill that would have provided health insurance for children who had none, and railed against the Bush administration for being unwilling to support this needed social service, while at the same time being willing to provide vast amounts of funding so that uninsured children could grow up and be killed in Iraq. Stark has decried the promotion of narrow religious beliefs in science, fought for marriage equality, and programs that serve the poor. As a result of outspoken individuals like Stark, conservative religious groups would dearly love to diminish our influence on society by burying us. This is one reason we have an every member canvass.
We want the Unitarian Universalist message heard loud and clear in the marketplace of religion and culture. The alternative once stood next door as a stark reminder, no pun intended. There was First Parish, a vast and vacant falling down church with broken windows and a leaky roof, barely holding, on with a handful of members. Do we want a society where the liberal message is silent? We want our message heard loud and clear in our community. Yes, we can.

Yes, we can is the theme of our canvass this year. At first the Finance Committee considered the title “Yes U Can,” as a takeoff on the U as in UU, but the preference seemed to be to echo our President, and his use of the more unified word, “We.” Together we can, so that we acknowledge our common task rather than the you, which sometimes translates into Yes, a certain endowment can, or rentals can, or others can, you can, but not me. For many years this congregation literally relied upon its endowment. In many memories, even of some people who are here today, you recall that more than 50% of the budget was taken from the endowment, and when they added in rental income, the membership was not bearing very much of the financial load. This changed eight or nine years years ago, and now pledge income is more than double the endowment. Yet the endowment has been crucial as we struggle to meet our basic costs - buildings to be maintained, salaries to be paid, ongoing programs to be subsidized.

Something significant has happened this year with our endowment. What our endowment tells us is that a group of people who were once committed to this community gave of themselves with their gifts to further increase its meaning, its impact, its history and the beauty of what we have. They wanted it to last. Sometimes we act as if these endowment belong to us, when in reality we belong to them. Too often congregations look at endowments in the spirit of survival or status quo. We are rich, they think, or we don’t have to do anything. While we all know that even modest endowments like ours, have taken a huge hit this year, we also know that these gifts are given to preserve the church, while its growth and vitality is in our hands. An endowment can be a dead gift or a living one. It is dead if we have buried our own motivation to help the church move forward, and convince ourselves that we don’t need to do anything. When we live off the past, then we are acting as thought the endowments belong to us. If we are true to our endowment, we aspire to keep the flow of gift giving moving forward. The gift should continue to live. We belong to it, and are morally obligated to reinvent our religious commitment to our faith. I believe we have done that this year with socially responsible investing. We have said with our commitment that these funds must reflect the kind of justice seeking world our principles embody.

So when we consider our canvass commitments we may ask how we respond to those forces in the world that want to bury us, or whether we bury ourselves by being overly reliant upon the past. I think we have affirmed a commitment to the future by what we have accomplished here in the past ten years by saying no to those forces that would bury us.

The origins of our pledge drive can be found with our central religious focus on freedom. If you lived in Watertown in 1750 then you automatically belonged to this church. There were no dissenting groups, and it was the law that you belonged here. You also automatically paid taxes for its support as that was the law, too. Over 150 years ago ago, people were freed from this obligation to pay taxes for the support of religious institutions in Massachusetts, and so the offering that we take in our services, or even the pledge drive itself, is a symbol of freedom. It takes your free will offering to support this church with as much money as you are willing to donate. In 1800 people fought for the right to give freely to their churches, and some were jailed for civil disobedience or had property seized because they said no state can dictate public support for religion.

Some people have a little problem understanding this free faith and seem to desire a
little more substance. This substance was typical of the faith in one of those state supported institutions in England 405 years ago. Lets say you were paying to support Wentworth Abbey. Even then paying church bills seemed like a relentless process. One bill dated november 1605 assessed the abbey 4 pence for solidly repairing St. Joseph, 6 pence for cleaning the Holy Ghost, 5 shillings 6 pence for repairing the Virgin Mary before and behind, and making a new child, and finally, 6 shillings, 6 pence for making a new nose for the devil, fitting a horn, and gluing a piece on his tail. Think for a moment of the savings we have because we forego the need for these kinds of repairs with our rejection of such idolatry. We don’t have to be concerned about the Virgin Mary’s behind, we can’t clean a Holy Ghost that isn’t there, and you won’t find the devil anywhere as a line item in our budget. At least our support of the church is not as complicated as it might otherwise be. Without such trappings of faith, we realize how dependent we are upon our freedom of choice. We all know in our liberal congregation that there is no punishment, mortal or supernatural if you don’t show up or don’t pledge. I cannot condemn you, well I can, but it won’t do any good with the supreme being, who Pete Stark says, in his freedom, does not exist anyway. So it has to come down to values and community. If you believe it is essential that this congregation or this religious faith be strong, so that its message of freedom continues to be heard, then we hope you will express your commitment by making a commitment to First Parish.

Eliot Janeway once said, “Our feelings about our money reflect our feelings about ourselves. We might expect that a church would scold us about materialism, and while materialism may have led the country down the road of the economic downturn we are now enduring, it is not our lifestyle that makes most of us happy or not. The economic challenges that each one of us faces in the days ahead will be handled in the same way we handle other challenges in our lives. What this means is that if you have endured a downturn before, you can do it again. What this means is that winning the lottery is not going to change who you are and what you value. Those things you value the most, even in tough economic times, will continue to be things you value. The Gospel of Matthew simply states that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. The heart of the church as an institution is now with socially responsible investing. Will a piece of your heart be given to the support of this institution? Whatever you give will reflect the depth and breadth of how far the church can go to create a vision of what we want ourselves and our church to be in the world. Emerson once wrote, “Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.” Think of how much beauty you can create with the gift of your money.

The story, The Gift, tells of a girl whose childhood deformity one day became a beautiful gift that she conveyed to a woman when the woman was able to see her sister in the girl. Those deformities that hold us back are really blessings when we see and use them in certain ways. Living on an endowment alone without realizing our own commitments is a kind of deformity. It is like the lazy sons of the old man in our children’s story today. They want the cheap buried treasure that they don’t have to work for. Then once they start digging for what they believe is buried there, they realize the value in the hard work and commitments they have made to produce something greater for themselves and their community. So for us, then, we use those buried gifts to help make justice in the world by supporting companies that are not involved in the production of weaponry or the exploitation of workers or support green technology, then the invested funds become blessings upon the world.

The same is true of the pledge drive. Giving the least we can, or what’s left over means a kind of half hearted support for the institution, and gives the message that it is not very important. Then buildings crumble, or no ones cares. It comes to look and act deformed. Is it financed through whatever cash you have, or is it something essential that you are willing to sacrifice for? This week I wrote in the newsletter, “We must pay to ensure our values are acted upon in the world, and what greater reflection of our values could we make? These kinds of commitment say that you the members of First Parish have confidence that your gifts support an important liberal institution that you and the world need. But it more than affirms our values. Your commitment means that your children will be encouraged to embrace these liberal principles, too. Your commitment means that one of the oldest religious institutions in the country will continue its long history, a history that has seen it survive one or two economic downturns before. Your commitment means that you know that a larger community of love is ready to stand by you if you call on it to support you, help you, or encourage you along the rocky pathway of life. Your commitment helps us give life to the worshipping, living community of faith we all embody.

I do mean We, as in Yes, We can. I said before that our faith is a free one, which would seem to imply freedom for you, as an individual to grow your own faith. But you see we have no freedom, without relationship. And so we gather as a community to create the kinds of relationships that will help the world and the human family to be free. We want people to be free in their individuality, and free in their differences, and free to create bonds of affection that will all help fulfill the gift of life, which comes to us freely. My colleague Brent Smith suggests that the paradox is that the more our relationships deepen, the greater understanding we possess of the beauty of our individuality. We come more into ourselves. Like the young girl, we lose our sense of individual deformity, when we come to know ourselves through others. How many of us have experienced this? My father used to show me his slightly deformed left hand, that had what he called a tumor, which made his left index finger shorter than it should have been. This deformity kept him out of World War II. When he was little, classmates thought it odd, but he later his coach showed him how he could put this deformity to use by being able to throw the most marvelous curveballs and achieve success in baseball. In community, we come to see the value of the self that we may have felt some degree of shame about before. As we are in community with others, the more we come into being as individuals. You are the buried treasure, but you find that treasure by digging deeper and deeper into the relationships we forge with others in community. This makes me thankful for all the shared history, values, community life and love we have here. It is worth sacrificing for. These are tough times, but I know we have a strong church that will be supported by its members through these tough times. In difficult times, this church community is one thing to be grateful for.


Closing words - from Judith Jamison

“It’s never too early to teach your children about the tool of money. Teach them how to work for it and they learn pride and self-respect. Teach them how to save it and they learn security and self-worth. Teach them how to be generous with it and they learn love.”