First Parish of Watertown

“Ask For What You Want” - Mark W. Harris

December 13, 2009 – First Parish of Watertown

Call to Worship - “Channukah” by Lynn Ungar

Come down from the hills.
Declare the fighting done.
Be bold – declare victory,
even when the temple is wrecked.
and the tyrants have not retreated,
only coiled back like a snake
prepared to strike again.

Come down. Try to remember
a life gentled by daily acts
of domestic faith - - the pot
set to boil, the bed made up,
the table set in calm expectation
that when the sun sets
we will still be here.

Come down and settle.
Unlearn the years of hiding.
Light fires that can be seen for miles,
that dance and spark and warm
the frozen marrow. Set lamps
in the window. Declare your presence,
your loyalties, the truths
for which you do not expect to have to die.

It would take a miracle you say,
To carve such a solid life
out of the shell of fear.
I say you are the stuff
from which such miracles are made.

Sermon –

At Christmas time our boys always prepare a lists of items they hope to receive under the Christmas tree. I remember doing this myself every year as a child. My parents would ask me to write down every wish I had in a letter to Santa. I remember handing the list on to my parents with the hope that at least some of what I desired would be fulfilled by them, Santa, the Good Fairy or whomever might look favorably upon my requests. I don’t ever remember being especially disappointed with the major items I desired – books about the Civil War, toy soldier sets, baseball gloves and electric football games usually appeared when I asked. It was one instance where I was encouraged to express my wishes with the expectation that I would receive what I wanted. Ask and you shall receive. This was an idea I learned in church, too. After he cursed the fig tree, Jesus says that if you have faith anything can be accomplished. Then he goes on to say that “whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive.” I was lucky as a child because I usually got what I wanted. Some children, because of financial circumstances may have lower expectations or none at all. Of course parents have limits. Children may ask for outrageously expensive items or too many gifts. We also knew that we were not going to get everything. Yet much of this gift buying obsession seems like selfish consumerism when our kids are surfing the web looking for the latest item, and we receive Macy’s Star Rewards cards in the mail telling us to “Be joyful, it’s that magical time of year . . .when you get everything you asked for (well, almost everything).” But do we actually get what we want, and do we really ask?

At first glance a sermon on asking for what you want might seem downright selfish, as it feels like positive thinking run amok. Barbara Ehrenreich has a new book called Bright Sided, on how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America. Ehrenreich’s feelings on this first surfaced when she had cancer and was turned off by the dogmatic application of having the right cheerful attitude to banish all doubt so she could cure herself with happy-think. Underlying this philosophy was the idea that you should get what is yours. There are megachurch pastors who exhort their parishioners to visualize wealth. telling them it could all be theirs. This has a corollary in those who seem to believe that if you just think right, your illness, or job loss, or marital dis-ease will instantly be cured. Ehrenreich says there is a major difference between this naive belief that you can scare away things with positive thinking, and getting a grip on reality, realize the difficult circumstance you might be in, and still have the determination that you can try your best to overcome these very real obstacles.

So when I suggest that you ask for what you want I don’t mean accumulating goods, but rather speaking up for yourself when you come to a time when you have always been silent or reluctant or afraid to speak up. I admired a little girl I heard at the Karate studio just the other day, who despite the fear of reprimand that showed on her face, responded to her mother’s prodding to use her words. She looked her mother right in the eye, and said, “I don’t want to wear the baby shoes any more.” Her mother thanked her for sharing what she was feeling, and promised no more baby shoes. Expect that you will speak up. When I suggest speaking up for yourself it means to not let someone tell you in words or actions that what you have to say is stupid or irrelevant, but that it is an important contribution to a conversation where everyone should be heard. The other day I was speaking to a frustrated colleague who was dealing with a doctor who was seemingly dismissing her chronic pain. I encouraged her to keep pushing, and make him listen. If you have a question about something that was denied you, or you don’t understand, then ask that question. Expect that people will listen to you. In courtroom dramas the people swear to speak the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Anything less is a lie. Expect to tell the truth. See things for what they are, and not a photocopy facsimile.

One of the classic examples of asking for what we want occurs in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Courtship of Miles Standish.” Even if you didn’t read this tale in your childhood, you probably learned about Priscilla Mullins famous retort to John Alden’s romantic inquiry on behalf of his friend Miles. Priscilla says, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John ?” While the historical veracity of this is dubious, it became a way for Longfellow to express the feelings of the characters in this love triangle. John had a certain loyalty to his captain Miles who was brave but inarticulate, but John also has romantic feelings for the young Priscilla. Longfellow has Priscilla speak her mind in revealing what she wants. Can John do the same?

Miles Standish provides a good prototype for the man who cannot speak up for his own feelings. I know from my own experience that regardless of asking for Christmas gifts, or even expecting as the youngest child in the birth order that I would be loved and lavished with gifts without asking, I still failed to live by the need to speak up so that others would know what I was feeling or wanting. This youngest child felt that any negative feelings could not be expressed in my family, as it would cause conflict, and so my usual approach was to hide saying what I wanted or felt if it seemed it would in any way upset the emotional equilibrium we had established based on not talking about issues or pretending they didn’t exist. As I matured this attempt to keep everything on an even keel meant that I usually had great anxiety in situations where it seemed like conflict would arise. I could speak effectively if it was a prepared talk that I had control of, but any discussion meetings where I might have to speak extemporaneously made me extremely nervous. It is also been hard for me to express what I want in relationships. Many men do not ask for what they want because they cannot articulate it, but also because we expect our loved one to read our minds, and know exactly what we want to do or have, even though we have not said a word. So the first lesson in asking for what you want, is to actually say what it is. Speak your truth.

It is also hard to ask for what you want if you are poor or in need of assistance. It is not just a matter of pride, but rather that our culture has labeled those who have problems as failures. Bureaucracies are often set up to make it difficult for you to receive help. There is so much paperwork, and so many legal snafus that many people simply give up because it is complicated, embarrassing, and humiliating. If you saw the PBS showing of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit last year, you know what I mean. The gentle spirit of Amy Dorrit is threatened by her lifelong confinement in Marshalsea Prison. For years she cares for her father, the longest serving inmate who is serving a term for debt. A possibility of freedom appears in the person of Arthur Clennam who is trying to unravel a mystery in the wake of his father’s death. Yet we see the bureaucracy as an endless abyss of paper work where there is no intention to help unravel the injustice of this debt. Then Clennam's exhaustive search for answers leads him into a tender romance with Amy, but neither one seems capable of admitting it, let along saying anything to the other about their true feelings of love. Finally they are both able to hear the words Arthur had previously uttered to her “Seize your chance of happiness.”

In the call to worship today Lynn Ungar reminds us of the Channukah story where the Macabees are exhorted to - “Come down from the hills -Unlearn the years of hiding.- Declare your presence, your loyalties, the truths for which you do not expect to have to die. To carve such a solid life out of the shell of fear.” What we take from this story is that after we have asked for what we want, we expect that others will hear us. The great poet Emily Dickinson expected Thomas Wentworth Higginson to hear what she was asking for. This was for him to come visit her in Amherst. While most of us know Dickinson’s verse, Higginson may be unknown to us. Their relationship is chronicled in the book White Heat by Brenda Wineapple. Higginson was an abolitionist Unitarian minister who gave unswerving financial support to John Brown, tried to rescue fugitive slave Anthony Burns from jail, and commanded the first black regiment in the Civil War. He became Dickinson’s confidant in 1862 when she wrote to him after seeing an article of his in the Atlantic Monthly offering advice to young writers. After she sent him some verse, he responded positively, and eventually she referred to him as her preceptor, even implying that he had saved her life.

Higginson found it difficult to be spontaneous with Dickinson. In the correspondence, he said he wanted his responses to be written perfectly. When he didn’t answer her right away, she persisted. She wanted him to come and visit so she could thank him for actually listening to her, and giving her a chance to be heard. If he honored this request, she would consider it a success, writing him that “Gratitude is the timid wealth of those who have nothing.” Since their correspondence began she said that “To thank you in person has been since then one of my few requests. The child that asks my flower ‘Will you,’ he says --’Will you’ and so to ask for what I want I know no other way.” While she was direct, the question was complicated for Higginson who did not want to antagonize his wife. She wanted to know why the insane were so attracted to her husband, and so it was hard to convince her to support a special trip to see a poet who she considered crazy. Yet Higginson saw the truth in what Dickinson wrote, and said that apostles of truth were often labeled fanatic or insane. He wondered if we silenced all those who we said had a crack in their brain if we would ever have a vision of the ideal.

In this relationship perhaps what was most significant is that he took the risk of actually listening to her, and not dismissing or rejecting her outright as unworthy or crazy. After her death, he help see that her poetry was published, and the rest of the story is eternal literary fame. She asked him to listen, and he said yes. So much of asking for what we want comes in the context of our relationships. Do we ask our spouses, our employers, our friends for what we need or do we keep silent, or even expect them to know without our verbalizing it? Being willing to ask for help when we need it, is difficult for many of us. Our Puritan consciousness seems to demand that we do it ourselves, and take care of our own problems when a visit or assistance or even a word of encouragement to seek help might make all the difference. Higginson did visit Dickinson twice in Amherst over the years while they maintained their correspondence. Because he listened to her, she trusted him, and continued to send him poems. He may not have realized what a great gift his response to her was. Being isolated and alone, he affirmed the one creative outlet of her life, and she was forever grateful for his listening. She once reminded him, “Of our greatest acts, we are ignorant.”

If we ask for what we want, if we truly listen to each other with open hearts, then we can expect to tell and hear the truth. When Higginson eventually published Dickinson he compared her to William Blake, and said, “The Truth must dazzle gradually/ Or every man be blind.” Asking for what we want may sound selfish, but it is really about having self knowledge and faithfully expressing that knowledge to others in direct truthful ways that build deeper bonds between us. Randy Paush, the author of The Last Lecture, who died young from a deadly cancer listed several lessons for living. One of these was “Ask for What You Want.” An example he listed was being at Disney World, and being desirous of where the driver sat on one of the rides. Rather than just being envious he asked if he and his son could sit there, too. The response was, “Sure.” Their wish came true. It was easy in fact. He mentions being anxious abut test results when we feel anxiety over a health concern. When the hospitals says it will take weeks, we can ask if we can get them sooner. Sometimes the answer is yes. As my parents used to say, “It never hurts to ask.” Once during my college years, I was in a record store, and saw a full size cardboard cutout of Mick Jagger promoting the Stones’ newest album. I wanted to have it to decorate my room. My request received an affirmative response. All it took was asking for what I wanted.

Need a friend to run an errand or listen to your concern? Want to return something? Just ask. We could probably think of many things we would like to do or places we would like to go, and we dismiss it as impossible because we never ask. We may assume , “oh my family would never go there, or we could never afford that, or that is just too crazy.” But we never know the answer unless we ask. If we want to climb that mountain or ride that ride, or go visit someone we owe our life to, we can just ask. The opportunity may not come again. It is an expression of the truthful longing or need we feel in our hearts. Higginson believed in women’s rights. He wanted Emily to be heard. Now the whole world hears her. In our reading today, you heard an excerpt from March by Geraldine Brooks. It is a fictionalized account of the father figure from the classic book Little Women. He is a chaplain in the Civil War. Mr. March is recalling all that he could not do, those he could not save, but his wife is reminding him of the effort. He acted on the truth. Even when we do so, there are many things that are hard to bear. In relationships we feel rejections. In jobs we can get fired, when we ask for what we want, and when we speak the truth. March’s wife reminds him that the effort is enough - that he acted upon his beliefs, and did not violate the truth he lived in his soul. That is why it is so important for us to ask for what we want, to tell our loved ones what we need, to find the truth together when we listen to one another. Then we know as Lynn Ungar implies, that we “are the stuff from which such miracles are made.”

Closing words – from James S. Curtis

I wish for you, all around you,
People who love easily and forgive quickly;
Whose eyes are stars when you are night;
Whose voices are trumpets when you are silence.
I wish for you
People about you who are gifts in themselves,
And whose presence in your life
Is an all year round present.

“Being Perfect” by Mark W. Harris

December 6, 2009 – First Parish of Watertown

Call to Worship – from Richard S. Gilbert

Faith, hope, love, these three
I offer you this season,
Faith that living affirms,
Hope that caring illumines.
Love that matters more than anything.
Faith, hope, love these three
Not as gifts I offer them
For they are not mine to give.
They are yours and mine to share,
Humbly, with one another.
Fumbling, we hold their promise in our hands,
Faintly, we speak the trembling words,
Faith, hope, love, these three
I offer you this season.

Sermon

I like to be perfect. I am serious. When I was discussing this topic with Duffy during our weekly meeting, I said the topic, Being Perfect, was about me. Of course, I am not, nor could I ever be perfect. Far from it. The problem is, I try to be. That is the rub for me, and maybe for you, too. A little more than three years ago, Andrea and I had the distinct honor of performing a wedding ceremony for loyal church members, Martha Scott and David Morrison. During that ceremony, as some of you may remember, I made a flip comment about the fact that they both like oatmeal, thereby implying that they deserved each other, since my own personal feelings about oatmeal are less than positive. It is a texture thing with me. In any case, many people in the congregation apparently heard me say “opium” rather than oatmeal. If it wasn’t David and Martha, this could have been a problem. Some family members might have thought I was implying they were drug addicts or something, if I actually said opium. Of course this became a hot topic of conversation during the reception, and was in many ways kind of amusing for everyone involved. Yet despite laughing about it myself, at least publicly, I also had this nagging obsession with what I actually said. I take great pride in not making mistakes. When I give a reading I expect it to be heard clearly and distinctly by everyone. I also want to use the proper diction, inflection and pronunciation So at first, I assumed people misheard me, because I felt there was no way I would alter or mispronounce the words in the script, where it clearly said, oatmeal. I found it inconceivable that I would make this kind of mistake, since, as I have already told you, I am perfect.

This is a time of year when there are many people who are trying to be perfect. You may see them wandering aimlessly in the local mall, or scouring some craft fair to find the perfect gift for their loved one. When you have teenage sons who are addicted to electronic devices, your eyes may become drawn with darkened circles growing beneath them, as you desperately squint at and scan every search engine imaginable for that perfect component that will enable them to have Japanese animation directly fed onto their brain waves. And then you wonder why you feel some degree of frustration. Even when I feel momentary elation that I have found something that might please them, an increasing sense of dread fills my soul. What if it is wrong? Slowly as Christmas approaches, an impending sense of doom fills me, as it is this very moment. On the big morning I will watch their eyes, and their body language and pray I will hear happy sounds of elation and see smiles upon their lips. Will it be the perfect gift?

Why are we so obsessed with perfection? We want, first of all, to do things right, or at least what we think is right. So at the holidays we have to put up the decorations and lights that we have always put up. We have to get the wreaths and the tree, and we have to purchase the right gifts, so that our loved ones will feel appreciated. Some men who have no clue as to what to buy their significant other, listen to television, and hear “every kiss begins with Kay”, and begin to wonder if they must run to the jeweler. Would she really like a diamond? We invest a lot of emotional energy in planning and hoping that the big day will be happy and successful. If we can say in our hearts, I bought you everything you wanted. I cooked your favorite food. It is Christmas the way you like it. It’s perfect, or should be. So why aren’t you happy? There is an notion in all of us, to some degree of a desire to do things in just the right way, and it especially strikes us at holiday time.

Aspiring to being perfect is not merely a holiday affliction. It happens to most of us daily and perennially, as well. At Christmas time I provide Andrea with a list of all the books I want. The plan is, if I know exactly what I am going to get, and it is exactly what I want, then it will be a perfect Christmas. Of course this prevents the giver from surprising the recipient or having any emotional investment in what is given, but it is one way of assuring perfection. I know what is coming. At Thanksgiving every year I always make homemade cranberry sauce. Both last year and this year I have tried new recipes. I know in some prior years the sugar syrup did not jell quite the way I wish it had. As a result I had runny sauce. This year the new sauce jelled beautifully, making for a happy holiday participant. Did the runny sauce ruin my holiday in hears gone by? It didn’t, but a less than perfect sauce or turkey, or cheese cake can seem like a disappointing failure when it feels like others are expecting it to be there, and to be good. We want to make them happy or feel like we contributed. We may project that the family thinks I never do anything right.

This sense of not being able to be perfect may come from parental expectations, or pressures to succeed, or even heightened sensitivity to criticism. It also has strong religious roots. Those of us raised in the Jewish and Christian traditions are well aware of the human perfection and innocence that is portrayed in the creation story of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are without sin until they make a bad choice to eat the fruit, and this leads to a fall from the perfect life in the perfect place. We are led to believe from the story that their bad choice leads to human pain and suffering. This is even more explicit in Christian scriptures. In Matthew 5:48, after a long discourse on loving your enemies, and turning the cheek, Jesus sums up these seemingly impossible feats with the closing verse: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The faithful are exhorted to be like God, and they do so by becoming more and more perfect. In the letter to the Philippians, Paul says that even though he is not already perfect, nevertheless, he presses on to make it his own. It was the way for Christians to achieve salvation, and one did so by giving your heart over to the one who achieved perfection here on earth, Jesus himself. He was perfect and sinless and all those things you were suppose to achieve morally, but never could.

Perfectionism became a religious doctrine, and in fact the central tenet of Methodism as expounded by John Wesley. This is what we strive for in order to go to heaven. He didn’t say it was common, but that near the end of a life, it was possible to be sinless. William Ellery Channing, the great Unitarian preacher, believed that a person could continue to perfect him or herself, even into an afterlife, and his views were published in a work called, “The Perfect Life.” And so even if we fail to follow the religious beliefs anymore, many people still believe that they have to be perfect in order to be a worthwhile person. When it comes to perfectionism, I prefer the theology of another Methodist, Peter Cartwright, who when asked if he was perfect, said, “Yes, in spots.” All of us have a nice mixture of spots, which is what goes into making us human. There was a bit of irony with all the media attention showered on Tiger Woods this week. Woods has often been characterized as the perfect, handsome athlete who has striven for achievement, and his dedication to his profession has led him to scale new heights. Yet this week, shortly after the infamous car accident and revelations of infidelities, one of the first things he said was, “I am far from perfect.” Those who tend to be prone to perfectionism feel a need to hide or conceal their imperfections. And this can lead to even more obsessions.

Channing believed that the desire to strive for the ideal or the perfect is the seminal principle of religion, and surely an ideal to become better , or more morally advanced creatures is a noble aim. Yet too often this desire to achieve perfection falsely leads us to believe that we might actually achieve it, when in fact our failures are more likely to teach us valuable lessons about life that we can learn and grow from. They also teach us some measure of humility whereby we can forgive others and ourselves when we make the inevitable mistakes that will come. Peter Fleck, a leading UU layperson from the 1970’s and 1980’s told a Scandinavian story that his mother used to read to him over and over again. It was the story of a gnome who lived in the forest under the root of a tree. He had one big wish: more than anything else in the world he wanted to own a green hunter’s bag. He used to think about this green hunter’s bag by day and dream about it at night. He visualized it a thousand times. Then one day, on his birthday, he received a beautiful green hunter’s bag as a gift. His dream had come true; his wish was fulfilled. He now owned it. You would expect that he would now be happy. He had what he always desired. But all he could say was, “it’s a nice hunter’s bag, only it is not quite as green as I had imagined it.” The dream of perfection is never quite what we imagined. How often is the great book not quite so great, or the majestic mountains not quite so high as we imagined or hoped. Can we be happy with what we find or what we get? We had the idea of what would be perfect, and it fails to materialize. We may conclude that marriage is not quite so exciting as we thought it would be, or being a parent is much too draining. We imagined it was going to be better. Maybe this is why Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson was attracted to Platonism. Plato taught that there is an ideal, but what we have here on earth are only mere reflections of that perfection. We strive to achieve that quality perhaps, but too much striving or too many false expectations, will in the end be destructive. We make choices, and some of them are bad ones, and some of them result in failure. Sometimes we say the wrong word, and sometimes the sauce is runny.

What is true is that we are usually good enough. We give our best effort, and that is pefectly sufficient. Publishing books has helped me with this inclination to be perfect more than anything. The reason is that it is extremely rare to find a book that is error free. Years ago I edited the UUA’s annual directory of all the ministers and churches. Addresses and phone numbers were changing all the time. New ministers were ordained, and old ones died. I even had an esteemed colleague try to correct the manuscript by telling me that another minister, who was still listed was actually deceased. Unfortunately, I was right all along. He was alive. The great, elder minister I listened to, was not so perfect either. Can you imagine a perfect phone book where you alone were responsible for every name and number being accurate? First I edited a Directory and then I wrote a Dictionary. You can see I like names and numbers. But in each case it was a foregone conclusion that there would be mistakes. To date I have found about twenty-five errors in the dictionary. This is one of the best ways to begin to over come our inclination towards perfectionism. Show yourself that it is impossible to be perfect. You cannot do it. There will be mistakes. This allowed me to embrace my failures, and to see that some will always occur - but they may teach us how to do something correctly the next time on the one hand, or to let go of the unimportant on the other.

After we see that we can let go of the need to be perfect, and accept and learn from our failures, we can be open to new ways of learning. Some people have a terrible time with criticism. We feel as though we cannot offer constructive comments because it seems we have to protect others from what we view as negative. Yet most of us could benefit from listening to criticism, and use it to our advantage. Our student minister, for instance, will not learn what congregations like and dislike, if you always tell him everything is fine. If anything the holidays teach us the ultimate lesson, nothing is perfect. Emerson once said that everything in the universe has a crack in it, and you and I have cracks all over. The wrinkles in our skin mean that we don’t have a perfect complexion. The poor eyesight means we can’t pick up the ball to swat it with a bat as quickly as we might wish. When we perform the fingers may slip, and a bad note echoes for all to hear. The brain we were born with is not quite swift enough to master those scientific formulas. Because of gifts, circumstances, decisions, we will never be perfect.

And even when we reach the top of our profession, we still fail - time and again. One of my parishioners in Milton once said the most memorable sermons I ever gave was when I told the story of Ty Cobb, the greatest hitter who ever lived with a lifetime average of .367. And what does .367 mean? It means he failed almost two out of three times. He made outs. He fanned. And so as Christmas comes. Let the perfect gift go. Let the perfect pie go. Let the perfect sermon go. And if you were perfect, who would want to be around you anyway? If you or I were perfect - we could not listen, we could not grow, we could not change, we could not learn, and ultimately we could not love, as love requires risk and forgiveness, and at least admitting error, whether we are wrong or not. So we must wallow in our imperfection. We must be realistic about our failures. Don’t try to be perfect. Just have fun. And sometimes things are better than we ever imagined. While the gnome was disappointed with the green of his bag, I thought the green of the fields in the British Isles was the most beautiful green I ever could imagine. Spots of perfect color. And we sometimes experience those spots - a child who melts us with heart warming smiles, or perhaps a friend or partner who is somehow able to love us for a long time. Nothing is perfect, but there are spots . After all, as we heard in the reading, the perfect gift was not the most beautiful or the newest or even what he expected. It was old, used and even broken, hardly perfect. But it came from the heart, and it was a gift of love. We all should forgive ourselves and others for not being perfect. We can still strive to be better. That’s good to try, and then be more than happy for those spots of perfection that come our way.

Closing Words – from Mildred Boie

No, there is neither peace nor hope of peace
In all the latitudes turned toward this year:
Let us, at least, win private truce, and cease
The war within our hearts, and the heart’s fear.

Let personal suns surmount the headlined day;
The gentle touch disarm the angry word;
Keep single lives alive, let truth outweigh
Each gun, and April mouths alone be heard.

For in the haven of the loving mind
The refugees from self can build new land,
And even winter-hardened doubts may find
Answer and courage in the outstretched hand.

Seeing how mortal people and nations are,
Let our brief hearts be bold, and out-love war.

“Life as Meals” - Mark W. Harris

First Parish of Watertown – November 29, 2009

Call to Worship – from Wendell Berry

Sowing the seed,
my hand is one with the earth.

Wanting the seed to grow,
my mind is one with the light.

Hoeing the crop,
my hands are one with the rain.

Having cared for the plants,
my mind is one with the air.

Hungry and trusting,
my mind is one with the earth.

Eating the fruit,
my body is one with the earth.


Sermon

In the novel A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf contrasts two kinds of meals. The first, a luncheon eaten at one of the men’s colleges at the fictional Oxbridge University is a passage you did not hear in the reading. It is a sumptuous feast of partridge swimming in sauces, and beautifully coin shaped potatoes and fancy sprouts, “foliated, she says, “as rosebuds but more succulent.” Woolf says this beautifully prepared and presented meal results in a “profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse.” This shared repast prepares all the participants for a much deeper experience of each other, and indeed, life itself. Then we see how the other half lives, the women, that is. Woolf takes us to the new women’s college founded on the then radical idea that women deserve an equal education to men. This evening meal sounds more typically British. It includes homely beef muddied in greens, which only creates an image in my mind of what we used to refer to as mystery meat, as we trudged through the commons line at my own alma mater, Bates College. The beef is followed by prunes, surely more of a laxative, dried and forbidding, than the sumptuous and sensual fruit it once was. Finally, there are the dry, flat tasteless biscuits. Rather than providing uplift to the spirit, this meal seems more representative of oppression and repression. Woolf concludes that this kind of unequal dining prevents the women from the full development of body, mind and spirit. She writes, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

During the last few days most of us have been thinking about dining quite a bit. There are contrasting images for us, too. While Woolf was reminded of the oppression of women in society, we can often feel other kinds of juxtapositions as well, that lead us to ponder deeper meanings to the holiday. On Wednesday the Globe carried a picture of a Thanksgiving meal being fed to the homeless at Boston Garden. On one side of the table were all the white helpers scooping out food for the black recipients. While some might see it as a picture showing people expressing kindness to others, it also was a stark reminder of the divisions between wealth and poverty and race in our society. So some of us in the midst of our annual feast remember those who have little food on their tables, and respond by giving time and energy to some kind of service project. Personally it may be a day when we struggle with all those family relationships and issues that never seem to get resolved, or it may be a day when we want to stay away from all the rich gravy laden food that will harden our arteries and make our hearts race. Sometimes that walk outside away from the relatives and the food is a good time for quiet reflection. And for still others it may not be a concern about who goes without, or which crazy uncle we are eating with, but the actual quality, not quantity of the food itself.

Last Sunday in church I had the experience of playing a turnip in the story we used to introduce the UUSC Guest at your Table program. Although the original story was based on a turnip, and we were simply retelling it, the fact that it was a turnip was not lost on me. We might think that lowly, plebeian turnip is associated with poor, oppressed classes of people. After all, we don’t think of classy restaurants serving turnips, do we? Yet the image of the turnip was quite relevant to me, because as part winter shareholders in a Community Supported Agriculture program, we have been eating our fair share of turnip, and its related root vegetable cousins beets, celeriac and parsnips. Andrea has made more soups and casseroles and salads than you can imagine, crowned most recently with turnip cake, which actually turned out to be parsnip cake, although I am not sure it really matters, since lots of sugar cures many taste issues. My wife is unusually creative in this way, and for that I am thankful, for if I were cooking, it would probably be lots of boiled turnip. Fortunately, I like these winter vegetables. But more than that, I believe in them. I believe in them because they are seasonal and local, and not laden with petroleum fumes or boxed and prepared with corn syrup in them. These issues of where our food comes from, and how much of it is more industrial than agricultural, or covered with corn, corn and more corn, is the subject of a film, Food, Inc., that we will be showing here on Friday, December 4. Please come.

I think it goes back to Virginia Woolf and the contrasting meals. What we eat is important for our bodies and our planet. You are what you eat was the old 60’s mantra, and it has much truth in it, but even more so now, because what we eat is so much more packaged and prepared and well traveled now than it was then. And why it is so crucial comes back to the central importance of food in many of our lives. Life in the household I grew up in, and in the one I live in now is built around meals. Perhaps it is the omnipresent specter of trying to feed three growing boys, which was my parents lot, and is now our own to replicate. The most frequently repeated words in our household are, “What’s for dinner? While the boys are hard pressed to even taste those turnips, or anything else in the fruit and vegetable families, there is that constant hunger that my parents used to refer to as trying to fill a hollow leg. Andrea tries to respond to that constant urge by cooking fairly healthy concoctions, and when I cook I tend to replicate Julia Child, not so much in terms of quality, but in terms of number of pans used (one or two shy of every one in the house), and also her basic philosophy of cooking which was, “butter, butter, and more butter.” You can see there is a bit of juxtaposition here between my new found belief in eating healthy and pure indulgence.

Let me say a word about indulgence. One of my favorite Zen Buddhist stories is the one about the man who is traveling across a field. He encounters a tiger. The man flees, but the tiger chases him. He comes to the end of a cliff. There is a root from a wild vine that hangs over the edge of the precipice. He grabs hold and shimmies out on it. Looking up, he sees the tiger sniffing away at his hoped for meal. Then the man looked down below, and saw at the bottom of the cliff, another tiger waiting to eat him up. Two mice, one white and one black, appeared, and little by little began to gnaw at the vine. Then the man saw a luscious strawberry growing on a plant that was twisted around the vine. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted! Life is short. Enjoy its goodness is a central message to this parable. When I was minister in Milton, the minister emeritus there was a crotchety old guy who no one seemed to like, but he had a certain philosophy about the church’s endowed funds that were used for charitable gifts. He said everybody needs to enjoy some strawberries in their life. The enjoyment of the food, the taste, the pleasure, the savoring, the presentation all bringing great quality to the experience, and greater willingness to touch the sweetness of life that is here for the taking right now. This is why local and seasonal produce is important, not only for the planet, but think of the taste a supermarket tomato, for instance. It is more like cardboard, than the luscious red fruit we pluck from the vine. This may remind us of the fat or laughing Buddha. Part of his personna is the enjoyment of the bountiful harvest.

A few weeks ago, Andrea and I saw the movie “Julie and Julia”, a film by Nora Ephron about the famous television chef Julia Child, and a young woman named Julie who found her niche in life by cooking all of Julia’s 500 plus recipes from her French cooking book during the course of a calendar year and writing about the experience on a blog. It is the best movie I have seen in years. Julia Child is a lost soul early in the movie when we see her travel to France with her husband, and then witness them at dinner talking about what she will do with herself. He asks her, “what do you really like to do?” She responds, “ to eat.” And then he says, “and you are so good at it.” The joie de vivre with which she consumes her food, is translated into an ability to become a master chef, and the rest is history. Like the Virginia Woolf passage we come to see with Julia that all of their cooking and eating as a couple is merely appetizer to the enjoyment of life, with deeper relationships that know much laughter and loving.

The other thing that Julia shows us is not merely an exuberant enjoyment and preparation of food that signals an appreciation for all of living, but that the food itself becomes a metaphor for the deeper truths that are usually revealed about ourselves and our relationships in the moments we have sharing meals with each other. This is seen in the way in which Julia cooks eggs. She reminds us that if we want to make an omelet, we have to break some eggs first. We cannot hold back from expressing who we are and what we want, but must bring all the force of our personality to bear with truth and integrity. The thin veneer of egg must be broken, and scrambled a bit to cook up something tasty. She expresses this in the flipping of the omelet in the pan. One cannot commit this act with any trepidation at all. Julia says we must have the courage of our convictions. If you are going to flip anything, you must do it, and then, even if it falls apart, you can always put it back together. The fullness of who we are can become present in the meals we prepare and eat with one another.

At the wedding at Cana, Jesus is accused of being a wine bibber. What this means is that Jesus knew and lived a life that expressed the truth that we come to know one another most truly around the dinner table, and much of his ministry was performed in sharing a table with others. Our share of winter vegetables is challenging because it means we don’t just pick up something quick at the store, or eat something quickly to get it over with and then move on to the next task. It requires a commitment of time and effort, including the use of involved recipes, more preparation with chopping and stirring. We envision the giant pile of onions that makes Julia weep and weep as she tries to qualify for the Cordon Bleu; onions that will eventually cook until caramelized. So tasty! We continue to bathe in more ingredients, luxuriating in herbs and spices. But it is not merely time and effort. It is done to bring us into closer companionship with those we love. The food is our way of expressing love.

This was certainly true of my family of origin. When we were called to the table, we were called to be with one another. This was the time and place to give thanks for all we had, and for exhaling that we make it through the day. If it was a day of pain, we felt that most severely around the table when we were safe with these we loved. If there was a crisis in our life - a bad grade, a divorce, it was the place to tell others and be affirmed. Or if it a wonderful adventure about to be embarked upon, this was the place to share - a college acceptance, an announcement of marriage, and then together we celebrated. It happened at that very table, that kitchen table that welcomed all the family members. The table that also became the place where over time familiar faces were missing, and we felt palpable grief. Food in our lives often becomes the source of defense against boredom, and relief against physic pain. Many of us wrestle with and have intimate relationships with our stomachs. But this time of eating also repairs the damages we suffer during the day, and is the primary connecting moment with those we love. Meals were and are the primal setting; the place that bind us and unifies us.

This summer there was a special exhibit at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine featuring the work of Robert Indiana. Indiana is most famous for his “Love” sculpture, the pop art icon that depicts the four letter word stacked up with the angled “o.” As you approached the museum this summer, you could see Indiana’s first pubic commission, an eighteen foot tall depiction of the word EAT. The museum had to turn off the electric lights because people thought it was advertising for a restaurant, and they were stopping for coffee and eggs. Indiana said eat was one of his favorite words because it was the the last word his mother spoke before she died. This is a fitting word for many of us, who remember moms who always wanted to feed us and feed our friends. With full bellies we grew. With full bellies we knew we were loved. With full bellies we could do our work better at school. And if it was good, tasty, healthy food, then all the better. This prepared us to be fully present for those we love, to enjoy, to learn from, to be engaged with in conversation. Life for me has always been meals. I love to eat. Now I think more about food and the planet - about eating local and slowing down to take care of myself, and to appreciate the origin of this sustenance. I like the winter harvest, and I am lobbying the health department to let First Parish help bring local fish to Watertown. As I age I think about eating less, but appreciating more. I think of eating well, and so fiber is my middle name. Nevertheless I love the strawberries. All that life holds happens at the table. Life is good. Taste its sweetness. Bon appetit!


Meditation - “Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table, we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.


Closing Words - from Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

Our worship has ended, let the real communion of body, mind and spirit begin!