Responsive Reading #560,    The Parable of the Great Banquet, Luke 14:16-24 (NIV)

“Oh Kitty! How nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-glass House! I’m sure it’s got, oh! Such beautiful things in it! Let’s pretend there’s a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it’s turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It’ll be easy enough to get through.” And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist. In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. “So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room, “ thought Alice: “warmer, in fact, because there’ll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it’ll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can’t get at me!” (Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll)

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, this Sunday we are contemplating the world – both the world of this church and the world that surrounds this blue marble of our planet. When we see the devastation of war and the complexities of a world that is supposedly going global in its economics we are struck by the fact that it seems no matter how many countries we get involved in commerce it is nearly always the poor and the disenfranchised that suffer. China is moving into the foreground of those countries where jobs are being outsourced and their factories are surrounded by razor wire and have armed guards posted twenty-four hours a day. The workers are told that the wire and guards are there to protect them, but there is a sense in which these wage-slaves are being held captive by the simple fact that their children – like all children everywhere – cry when they are hungry. Help us to remember these crying children when we go to places that sell cheap because the manufacturing has been cheap. Cheap products are one thing, but life itself should never be sold short, and if cheap means suffering for men, women and children 10,000 miles away perhaps we should reconsidered the purchase.

It’s inescapable that during this Social Action Sunday that we remember the Serenity Prayer used by so many twelve-step programs.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

May the words of our mouths be written on our hearts and may our hearts lead us to clothe the poor, feed the hungry and give succor to those who are in need.

This morning, too, we remember how blessed we are. Before we complain this week about anything may we search our hearts and see that even though we may be in pain, there are roofs over our heads, food on our tables, and hot water in our baths.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

Introduction: This morning we have readings from the New Testament and a children’s story by Lewis Carroll. Both are children’s stories in that the Bible comes from a time when Humankind looked upon the world as if it’s author stood afar in heaven and after having created everything looked down upon us. We may no longer believe that there is an old man with a white bread whom we might know as God beneficently looking down and gauging how the world is going any more than we believe that it is possible to walk through a mirror and be in the room that is reflected there in the mirror. Nevertheless, both are parables – both are short fictitious narratives from which morals or spiritual truths can be derived.

          When my daughter, Isabelle was little she used to walk through the house with a good-sized mirror in her hand. I would see her stepping over the lentils above the doors as she made her way into the different rooms of the house. I had not realized up until the time I’m writing this sermon that my daughter was doing something that probably all children have done since the invention of the mirror. Her world was not literally through the looking glass but it was interpreted through the looking glass as she navigated our house as if it had been turned upside down. The floors were now the ceilings and the ceiling was now the floor.

          It must be gratifying for a child to turn the adult world upside down. To take that which they do not completely understand, a world that they do not make the rules for, and do not control and flip it so that the new world, the one they have created, is known only to them and they are the only ones who know that one should step around the light fixture on the ceiling.

          As Alice put it, “Oh what fun it’ll be , when they see me through the glass in here, and can’t get at me!”

          Today we will be turning worlds inside out and upside down so that we might glimpse through a rearrangement of life the possibilities that may have escaped us – escaped us because we have grown too accustomed to the manner in which our world is arranged – so accustomed, in fact, that we now take this arrangement as the status quo, or the state in which everything has always been.

          Today is Social Action Sunday, and that doesn’t mean we’re going to take to the streets with banners and bullhorns, it also doesn’t mean that today you put two cans of tuna in the Caritas baskets instead of your usual one.

          It’s interesting, to say the least, that during times of great economic boon people are less likely to get involved in social action projects.  In fact, it was during the great depression of the 1930’s that the per capita charitable giving was at its highest in these United States of America. Think on that. During times of great economic boon – charitable giving reaches all time lows.

          There’s an analogy going around about churches. In this analogy it’s stated that churches either have windows through which the parishioners can see and engage with the world, or there’s the flip side – churches whose windows are more like mirrors where the parishioners mainly see themselves and the focus is on their needs. We have windows, don’t we? But they look out on a peaceful garden with a gurgling fountain – not every much like the real, is it?

          It has also been said that social action is the true measure of a congregation. Based on its social action agenda what sort of grade do you think this congregation deserves?

          In a recent newsletter that I received from my home church, 1^st Church Dallas they had two boxes separated in the newsletter from all the other articles. In one of those boxes it proclaimed – “The Power of Commitment – 1^st Church Dallas raised $138,952 in 2005 to aid the survivors of Katrina, Rita and the Asian tsunami.” In the other box further on into the newsletter it proclaimed – “The Power of Commitment – 1^st Church Dallas inspired over 100 volunteers to adopt 21 families during the Katrina evacuation.” Yes, 1^st Church Dallas is larger than we are. To be exact they have precisely 1,067 members.

          But it isn’t the numbers that put them ahead of us. It’s the level of commitment. It’s been said that in any given congregation less than 10% (Raising Money for Social Action, Michael Durall, 1999) may be truly interested in social action. Again, it’s not the numbers that are as significant as the level of commitment within those numbered.

          So what are the benefits of a church that has a high level of commitment within the social action area?

          When I was a member of 1^st Presbyterian Church of Dallas I traveled with a group of 35-40 people who went down from several different churches to Cuidad Juarez. We had a sister church – also Presbyterian – down in Juarez and we stayed in their community center. A Community Center that was built with monies from donations from many churches in Texas, and also built with the labor of many Texas Christian Churches. The accommodations were minimal – there was a men’s dormitory and a woman’s dormitory – bunk beds in each – with dormitory style shared bathrooms, and a communal dining hall. The food was incredible. We paid the Mexican woman who cooked for the community center to go out and buy groceries and we ate Mexican style the whole time we were there! Yum!

          The projects varied, but first and foremost was the building of a new house for a destitute family. Now, when I say house, I mean a square about 40 feet by 40 feet with two small bedrooms and a kitchen half walled off from a very small living room. There was electricity and running water, but no bathroom. The community in which we built this home shared outhouses that were scattered throughout the community.

          We gather on the first morning of our project with the family – all except the father who was at work – we made a sacred circle, prayed with the family, and then dedicated the project and our work to the greater glory of God. You can think what you like about that – suffice it to say that we made a conscious choice to be deliberative about what we were doing. We built that home in less than four days, and then the majority of the workers went on to other projects while the skilled carpenters, and the electricians finished out the inside of the house.

          Toward the end of the week we gathered once again with the family and the father was there this time. There they were, father, mother, and three children, two girls and a little boy. Once again we circled the house, prayed, and then we planted a tree in the front yard in hopes that their lives like this tree would take root there and that they would prosper and grow. I don’ t think there was a dry eye when we got through.

          The point isn’t about what we did for that Mexican couple and their children. No, the point is that by working together as a congregation, through the sweat and tears that we shed on that project something strange happened to all of us. We didn’t exactly know what it was that happened until the first Sunday after we had returned to Dallas.

          That morning all those who had participated in the Cuidad Juarez project were asked to sit down front and before the sermon was given we were asked to stand. There was thunderous applause as all those in the congregation leapt to their feet to congratulate the congregation at large for 1) putting together the resources necessary for such a project to happen and 2) to recognize that within that congregation there were those – about 10% who were willing to go out and get their hands dirty doing the work.

          But the real payoff occurred on another level. You see those 15-20 of us who were on that project from First Church Dallas; we never saw each other quite in the same way ever again. Running into each other in the hallways we didn’t simply say hello, we stopped and hugged and genuinely inquired into each other’s lives.

          You see we thought that we had gone down to Mexico to help them build up their community, but in truth it was our community that had been enlarged and built up.

          There’s a short story written by Albert Camus entitled, The Artist at Work. In this short story, which is more like a novella, Jonas, is one of those people who grows up believing in his star. That’s a metaphorical way of saying he believed that something good was always on the horizon for him, and all he had to do was wait and it would arrive.

          In the story he goes from working in his father’s publishing house to painting. He falls into painting really and before he knows it he’s married has several kids and art critics all over the world are vying for the right to say that they discovered him. The problem with Jonas is, like the Biblical character he’s named after, Jonah, the fame that comes to him swallows him much like the whale swallowed Jonah in the biblical narrative. Jonas has no boundaries and before he knows it the fame and the money has filled his house with admirers and well-wishers to the extent that fairly soon, he can no longer find a private place to paint. But never being one of those people who despair of their situation, Jonas makes the most of being swallowed by fame. He builds in one corner of a large room with enormously tall ceilings he builds a cubicle where he can climb up to and paint in peace.

          Jonas begins staying up in his cubicle in the corner of that immense room longer and longer. Pretty soon there are parties going on below him well into the night, and at meal times his dinner is passed up to him on a hoist while those down below sing his praises and enjoy the food that his painting has brought in.

          Finally, one night Jonas collapses and falls from his loft. And this is how the story ends.

          “It’s nothing,” the doctor they had called declared a little later. “He is working too much. In a week he will be on his feet again.” “You are sure he will get well?” asked his wife Louise with distorted face. “He will get well,” said the doctor. In the other room, his old friend, Rateau, was looking at the canvas Jonas had been working on in the loft. It was completely blank, but in the center of it Jonas had written in very small letters a word that could be made out, but without any certainty as to whether it should be read solitary or solidary.

Conclusion: It is suggested in the article I read that churches either have all windows or all mirrors. In other words, the author of that article fell into the commonplace error of seeing things either one way or the other way. The final word in the above story – the word that could not quite be deciphered – it’s either solitary (as in solitude) or solidary (the root for solidarity). I used to think when I was younger that there was an obvious answer to this quandary. It had to be solidarity. Camus was conveying that people had to stick together and without this cohesiveness society would degenerate into the chaos of narcissism. But I am older now. And now I see that there must be time alone, and time together, and to be exclusive in either is to be sick in one-way or another. A church with only windows – a church which is constantly reaching out to the world and not taking care of its own is a church that is co-dependent upon reaching out to the world. A church that only has mirrors is obviously a social club and what they need to raise money for is a golf course, and a clubhouse.

          Real churches like real people use both windows and mirrors. Yes, we must reach out to the world at large, but we must also be self-reflective on how we do this. Are we doing this in consideration for those that are being helped? Are those being helped actually being reduced to children and are we playing the patron? Social Action can degenerate into noblesse oblige. And noblesse oblige is nothing more than social Darwinism. We reach out to help others because obviously our cultural, our way of life is so superior that these poor, ignorant bastards would be nowhere without us.

          Yet, too much self-reflection can put us in the same situation that Alice found herself in. In the looking-glass house everything was backwards.

          There is a tale told about an off Broadway revival of The Anne Frank Story. Now here is a play that if done right will elicit sympathy for the Jews during the Holocaust. But there were troubles within this production, as a matter of fact, the actress that was playing Anne simply wasn’t up to snuff. When the Gestapo showed up at the house in which Anne was hiding, someone from the balcony yelled out, “She’s in the attic!”

          There are times in which social action work done poorly is worse than no social action work done at all.

          Real churches have both windows and mirrors. Real churches look out upon the world and realize that they must step into the fray and help. Real churches are able through their self-reflective abilities to judge how best to help those who are in need. In these situations so-called victims become survivors and one’s position in a class structure does not determine the genuine quality of one’s life.

          The banquet alluded to in the passage in Luke this morning points out the fact that there is a feast taking place on this earth. This feast is open to all, but there are some who are invited that have an opportunity to serve the others. Within this feast, we have the blessing of having enough that we might actually share what we have with those who have not been sufficiently blessed. The point of Jesus’ parable is that if we don’t share, if we don’t partake there will come a time when even the bread on our table will lose its taste, life itself will lose its zest and when that happens then we know we have been essentially excluded from the banquet.

          On this social action Sunday let us covenant together that we will be that church that has both windows and mirrors. Let us covenant together that we will reach out when there are those in need, that we will write that extra large check when disasters strike, that we will investigate our motives and our intentions so that as caring, loving and responsible sentient beings we can make a church where we will be proud of the action we take in the world and equally proud of the reflection that, that action makes upon this church.

Responsive Reading #613,    The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry

PRAYER

Mystery of many names an mystery beyond all naming, as we gather here this morning our hopes are that the detritus of the week – the flotsam and jetsam of time will wash on by us. We commune together in this hour in hopes that we may draw closer to that, which is the essence of life. That essence at times seems erratic and fleeting. Let us settle into this moment – breathing deep into our bellies, let the anxieties of life be lifted up with our breath and exhaled into the world at large. Our foundation – the place that’s firm and unmoving – that place is nowhere outside of us. Going inside now as we are we feel that the cosmos is reflected in the darkness of our inner being. The moment that we are told is fleeting that moment upon which we ride like the second hand of the clock, once inside that evanescent moment evaporates and we come face to face with eternity which is now and now and again now. We are the world, the universe, the cosmos experiencing itself. Our consciousness is the mirror upon which time seemingly flies.  Yet the mirror remains constant and letting our minds go blank we finally understand that we are nothing more than that mirror and also nothing less. No image sticks to a mirror. Fear, anger, anticipation, expectation, anxiety these we finally see as ghosts in that mirror. Thinking we see them brings life to them again and so we let go … we relax and in that relaxation we finally see that even who we think we are is a ghost in that mirror. There is freedom in that disappearance. The past, the present, the future – all right here, right now. Knowing that there is no true reflection of who we are we accept all reflections and hold onto none. That which once scared us is nothing more than that which once scared us. That which brought joy simply that which brought joy. Not pushing away or resisting, not holding on or clinging we awake – the inner world … the outer worlds – the same and we – the swinging door of our breath connects them both.

In the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

Introduction: In the Gospel according to the good doctor, Luke, Jesus says in this part of the narrative, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or your body, what you will wear” – I can tell by looking out upon this congregation that you’ve obviously heeded Jesus’ fashion statement! – for  “Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.”

          And then Jesus goes on “Consider the ravens. They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them” – in other words – they don’t make a whole lot of plans but the natural cycle of life supplies them with their needs.

          “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?”

          We’re given similar messages in other religious traditions.

          There is the Zen story of an older monk and a young monk traveling between monasteries. They come to a stream where a beautiful young geisha is unable to cross. The old monk ties up his robe, and offers the geisha a ride on his back. She accepts and he carries her across the stream. Three miles down the road from the stream the young monk can stand it no longer when he blurts out, “I can’t believe you actually touched that woman back at the stream!”

          The older monk stops, looks at the younger monk and pats him on the shoulder. “You must be tired,” he said, “I carried her across the stream, but you have carried her ever since!”

          Being in the moment allows you to let go of the past!

          The point is to be in the moment. The point is to be in the moment.

          Still we are Westerners and we have a built-in desire to improve our life, our surroundings, and our world. How can things be as they are at this moment and be perfect? How can we look upon the journey of life and not be concerned about reaching the destination? If we are for peace in the world, then we must be concerned with when and how peace will arrive, yes? If we wish to abolish the death penalty then we had better be prepared to work long and hard in a society that does not believe in restorative justice to help bring about the end of vindictive punishments.

          In his book, Lateral Thinking, Edward De Bono suggests that we in the western world are concerned mainly with product and goals. Once we have decided what our goal is, we have a tendency to put the petal to the metal and scream down the street of life toward the object worth winning – the goal. De Bono suggests that it is this sort of practicality that has gotten the western world in the most trouble. For when we race toward our goal we are blind to the alleyways and detours along the path. With our eyes is on the prize everything else dwindles in the background as we become obsessed with the end product.

          What was it that we always used to give the Communists a hard time about? Do you remember? Marxist philosophy suggests as we approach the transition from the exploitation of the capitalist workers and begin the rise of the proletariat between the exploitation and true communism, what is it the Marxist say, the end will justify the means.

          Hasn’t there been something in the papers and news recently about the torture of terrorists – the information that those terrorists may have being so important that we will go to any length to get that information even if it means torturing them? The end it seems again will justify the means.

          Lateral thinking suggests that what looks like a goal in the beginning of an inquiry may in fact not be the goal once we have begun the process of attaining it. How does this come about? It comes about because as we pay attention on a moment-to-moment basis, we do discover the alleyways and side paths and in those detours we discover meanings that we never knew existed.  Those meanings change us and our goals thereby rendering the original goal obsolete, and its attainment unnecessary.

          Two of the most famous Civil War Confederate Generals, Major General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, and General Robert Edward Lee, Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, both held onto their roles in the Civil War up until the very last moments of their lives. After Stonewall Jackson had been mortally wounded at Chancellorsville and moved to the railway spur at Guinea Station, Jackson’s arm was amputated and he seemed to be recovering. But a fever set in and after having said goodbyes to his wife, Anna Morrison Jackson, and his daughter, Julia Jackson, Stonewall lapsed into a fevered sleep. When he awakened from that sleep around 3PM, he called out, “Order A.P. Hill to prepare for action! Pass the infantry to the front. Tell Major Hawks…” He left that sentence unfinished and in the midst of the Civil War on May the 10^th 1863, his last words were, “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”

          Robert Edward Lee survived the Civil War and was President of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia when he was struck down by the heart disease that had perused him since Gettysburg. As would seem normal for a Civil War General, Lee’s last thoughts centered on the war, but bizarrely enough Lee’s last words also ordered A.P. Hill into battle, “Tell Hill he must come up!” Lee said before letting go of the battle and ending his life with a soldier’s eulogy, his last words were, “Strike the tent.”

          Death had taken both men back to their previous goals – the winning of the war between the states, and yet, in the end, when death made its final claim, both Generals, obsessed as they had been with a Confederate victory, both Generals, let go of that struggle and ordered themselves a rest.

          I am reminded here of the character in Caddy Shack, played by Bill Murray. He tells the story of the summer that he worked in an Ashram and was the personal servant of the His Holiness the Dalai Lama. When the summer was over and all the other waiters/attendants had gathered together, Bill Murray’s character realizes that they have all received large sums of money for their duties while he has received nothing but a promise. In his own words, he says, “The Dali Lama pulled me aside and told me that for my services that summer I would receive full, complete enlightenment on my deathbed … so, I got that going for me!”

          The point in living life isn’t to find the solution for our woes on our deathbeds. I mean, that wouldn’t be terrible, but wouldn’t it be a bit more enlightening to understand life before life’s door is slamming shut in our face?

          There is a Zen Buddhist saying when one is looking for enlightenment. “Look under your feet!”

          There was an Air Force Pilot who was shot down over Vietnam and spent many years as a prisoner of war. He lost 80 pounds and a great deal of his health. When he was finally released the first thing he wanted to do was play a game of golf. Some buddies of his took him to a golf course and had pretty much decided that he’d be lucky to make it through 9 holes of golf – much less 18. To their great surprise he finished all 18 holes and played a superb game – beating every one of them.

          When questioned about his superb play he admitted that during his imprisonment he had played 18 holes of golf everyday. He played on courses he knew well from memory, but eventually he designed new courses that better stimulated his skill and kept his game sharp.

          This Air Force Pilot is a perfect example of someone who looked under his feet for his treasure. Unable to do anything inside a confined space, not offered much food or distraction, the Air Force Pilot decided that his feet were not bare, but clad in golf spikes, and that what lay before him was not a bamboo wall but the expanse of a 400 yard fairway.

          There are those who say that one must be born into a family that will teach one to be this ingenious in trying situations, or if not taught then one must be born with the genes that will allow such creativity.

          It is true children who have parents that set boundaries, are interested in what their children do regardless of whether it reflects well on the parents or not, children who feel as if they have choices in life, including the choice of disobeying the parents, children who are able to commit to what their doing unselfconsciously, and who feel challenged with increasingly complex opportunities for action – these children tend to be those who are able to cope with whatever life has to offer them.

          The Air Force pilot was probably one of those lucky children.

          Yet, even if we weren’t raised in such an optimum family situation it is possible to learn to be a person who sees a challenge not a threat, a person who sees an opportunity for learning and action.

          Such a person is said to be in flow. A person who is in flow is a person whose consciousness is not disordered. This type of person moves easily through life knowing that whatever is presented it can be incorporated into their consciousness and those things which are not helpful will be discarded, those things that can be processed will be processed easily and readily. And when this person hears voices – the voices are congratulatory and encouraging.

          The battle to remain in flow is not a battle between the world and oneself, it is rather a battle for the control over our own consciousness.

          There is a Buddhist saying that the fool sees himself in others, while the wise man sees others in himself. And there is a difference. A fool projects his fears and prejudices onto those around him, while a wise person is able to see the foibles of others easily in himself.

          There are two obstacles to remaining in flow and they are anomie and alienation.

          Anomie means literally – a lack of rules – no boundaries! If there’s one thing I’m learning in this Interim Preaching experience it’s a reaffirmation of my own boundaries.

          What’s lacking when we feel there are no boundaries is a lack of propriety.  The poet and essayist, Wendell Berry, says, “The idea of propriety makes an issue of the fittingness of our conduct to our place and circumstances, even to our hopes. It acknowledges the always-pressing realities of context and of influence; we cannot speak or act or live out of context. Our life inescapably affects other lives, which inescapably affect our life. We are being measured, in other words, by a standard that we did not make and cannot destroy.” We are being measured, in other words, by a standard that we did not make and cannot destroy.

          There is a sense in which propriety is the opposite of individuality, but a self in flow does seemingly contradictory things at the same time.

          When we are in flow we have a tendency to stick out from the crowd because the crowd does not know what is proper and is basically alienated from their own lives. That’s why the crowd looks to the crowd to see what the crowd wants! Yet this tendency of a person in flow to differentiate themselves from the crowd and stand out as unique is counterbalanced by the ability of those people in flow to feel in union with others and other’s ideas.

          A leader is a person who can and does define themselves – self-differentiates – and at the same time stays in contact with those who are looking to them for leadership.

          The second obstacle to staying in flow is alienation. Karl Marx knew that alienation would be one of the main problems of the industrialized world and he was dead right.

          Alienation is a social problem in that we are constrained by society to do things that go against our own happiness and our own goals. The constraint is usually an economic one. We do a job not for the sake of the job, but for the money so that we might have a roof over our heads and food on our tables. It’s important to know that our children will be dry and fed.

          Alienation has all kinds of effects, but the main one I see today is to lead people to the point of killing others without thinking about what they are doing. Children are taught to play video games in which they kill or eliminate the “enemy” and they win when they are not killed and the enemy is decimated.

          It’s a short jump from this sort of computer warfare to the smart bombs of both the Gulf War and the War of Iraqi Freedom.

          In the film, The Ground Truth, shown last Monday night in this very sanctuary digitalized computer images of a group of people were shown walking down a street in Iraq. The images were grainy and broken up and it was impossible to tell, whether these were women, children, goats, Iraqi fighters – impossible to tell! But the audio accompanying these images simply reported the movement and it was relayed back that, that movement was to be eliminated. “Roger that,” came a voice, then he voice said, “ten seconds to impact.” Ten seconds later a horrific explosion and the images were obliterated.

          There’s a disconnect here. A disconnect between pushing a button and total annihilation. Those were more than blips on a screen … more than grainy digitalized images … these were sentient beings.

          The story I am about to tell you was told to me in parts and pieces over many a drunken evening. For it was only drunk that my father could talk about his war. His sober mind had put the experiences out of reach, tucked away, buried. This is my father’s story.

          Before I was shot down I flew seven combat missions – seven. Always thought seven was a lucky number, you know … “seven come eleven,” huh? Seven come eight would have been all right with me. I was shot down. Didn’t bail out – rode the plane down – nobody was killed – one guy lost an eye. I kept both of mine – so still kinda lucky. Not a whole lot to do with your eyes in a prisoner of war camp – watch the guards watch you! So, I read a lot. The Bible mostly. My Dad’s Bible – he’d given it to me the day I left for the war.

          He was sitting on the porch, sort of lying back in the porch swing, the way he always did. A lemonade in one hand and his Bible resting on the seat. He closed the Bible – got up – gave me a hug and kissed me – right on the mouth – couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that, then, he tucked the Bible in the pocket of my B-4 bag. “Bring that back to me,” he said, “you mother gave me that – she’d raise hell if I lost it.”

          I carried it in my navigation bag, didn’t have any intention of reading it, really, just thought it would be good luck to have.

          As you can see, I didn’t lose it. Pop had these pieces of paper, little corners of paper stuck in special places – each had two numbers on them: Chapter and Verse – Chapter and Verse.

          This is the one in Proverbs. “These six things doth the Lord hate; yea, seven are an abomination unto him.” I guess “seven” had never been the Lord’s lucky number, either. “A proud look, a lying tongue and … hands that shed innocent blood.” Sorry, I can never get any further than that part.

          No, really it’s okay. I did what I had to do, right? I made the world safe for democracy! But whose world am I talking about? I mean, how many worlds are there? What about their world? You know, them … the enemy.

          Oh yeah, yeah, sure, sure – they’re just targets – little blips on a screen, right? But just because you put yourself miles above them, and even though they appear like ants – people are still people.

          And those abominations, oh my God, those abominations!

          They blew those people to bits, tore them to shreds, burned them alive. I didn’t even know those people, I could never have done those things in person, never! And all I did was push a button.

          Sooner or later, we all get our buttons pushed, I guess.

          But that’s not the end of it. Oh no, if you’re with the aircraft, and you are, cause you’re flying it with the bomb sight – if you follow the armament down, and you do – it’s simple follow through – then you’re right there when they flash out.

          That’s the thing about technology … it gives you an illusion of separation – but you can never be separated from what you’ve started.

          Never. Ever.

          Push a button, pull a trigger and you release a part of yourself, the projectile, the armament, it’s you – otherwise you couldn’t hit squat!

          It’s when that idea hits home you realize how destructive intention can be – the best … the worst – makes no difference … paving stones to hell. Part of you has left – gone out, done what it will do. That part – it never returns, ever.

Conclusion

          In conclusion I’d like you to stop thinking that what you’re doing now is preparing for something else. Don’t buy into that retirement illusion. The way you are now is the way you will be then. As my wife is fond of saying – wherever you go you take your head with you.

          In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, “This is it!”

          The way you treat the least of those in your life is the way you will be treated.

          In the words of the John Lennon song,

Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon, you’re gonna be dead
What in the world you thinking of
Laughing in the face of love

PRAYER:    by Jack R. Harris-Bonham

Mystery of many names and Mystery beyond all naming, we sit here this morning feeling solid and permanent, and yet, a nagging voice in all of us admits and possibly celebrates the fact that life is transient. The most important things in life are simply invisible. We can’t see the love that exists between all of us, but it’s there. It’s there in our helloes, and our asking, “How are you today?” It’s there in our answers, even when we’re just being polite and say, “We’re fine,” regardless of our feelings. Gathered together there is created between and among us something greater than the sum of individual parts. This is called community and in this case a covenant community.  Covenant means we’ve made a solemn compact to maintain our faith and discipline. In our case we have no dogma, and no sacred, holy book so our covenant is different. Our solemn compact is to maintain our faith in each other. This is a loving and giving faith. We give each other the benefit of the doubt because we have an abundance of doubt. The Buddhists say great faith and great doubt are the hallmarks of discernment. When we UU’s read character we bring to that reading an abundance of faith in humankind, and an abundance of doubt in the idea that any god can save us. We put our invisible faith in one another and with that belief we promise to serve not because we will be served, but because a sacred command to serve the other and to see the other in ourselves has been given. We serve ourselves by serving others. Today we rejoice in things that seem contradictory. We expand and contract stretching who we thought we were, admitting when we are wrong, taking back things said, asking forgiveness for acts unbecoming a friend and existing together as less than perfect human beings; loving as best we can, living better than we could have imagined, and laughing at ourselves all the while.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen

SERMON:     Coming and Going

     I’m starting the first half of my sabbatical tomorrow.  Jack will be the minister for the next three months.  Then I’ll be back for three months, then gone between mid-March and mid-June.

     With all the coming and going, it’s a good time to ask what’s at the core of this place, and of liberal religion.  What stays here?  If you took a picture of this place once a day for fifty years, then ran all those pictures at 32 frames per second like a movie, everything but the building would be a blur.  But you don’t come just to see the building; that isn’t the attraction.  What makes this place worth having is invisible, but more important than all the visible parts.

     What is at the center of liberal religion?  If it isn’t the minister and we don’t have one book we call Holy, like the Bible or the Koran, then what’s the center — or is there one?  Is it just a bunch of people who can believe anything they like and expect others to respect it just because they believe it?

     No.  That would be a group of narcissisms, each writing the others blank moral checks, as though it didn’t matter what we believe.  But it does matter.  Some beliefs are awful, or narrow or willfully ignorant, destructive, or just too silly.

     But if it matters, why?  By what authority?  What must we believe, and how can you say it in a religion without a creed or a Holy book?  You may see the pink poster in the hall with the Seven Banalities on it.  And if you’re from an orthodox religion, you may assume that’s the creed here, the beliefs required or assumed of all members.  But it isn’t.  It even says so.  It’s a behavioral agreement between church, not of individuals.  As St. Paul said in one of his greatest lines, we must all work out our own salvation “in fear and trembling.” 

     That’s what I want to talk about this morning — what liberal religion, or any honest religion, is about, and why it’s a good thing for you, for our country, even for the world.

     In some ways, it’s implied in the Invocation I use to begin each service:

     It is a sacred place, this:

          A place for questions more profound than answers,

          Vulnerability more powerful than strength

          And a peace that can pass all understanding.

     That’s not an orthodox Invocation.  Orthodoxy poses answers more profound than questions.  Turning it around the way we do means we have the ability and the duty to question all received answers: religious, social, or political.

     And some of the core of liberal religion is in the Benediction I use each week, which is a very liberal benediction:

     For those who seek God, may your God go with you;

     For those who embrace Life, may Life return your affection;

     And for those who seek a better path, may you find that path,

     And the courage to take it: step by step by step.

     Honest religion is about asking the kind of questions that can inform and deepen our appreciation and acceptance of ourselves and others, our love of life, and our passion to try and make a positive difference in the world around us, as the rent we pay for living.

     There are a lot of ways of saying this.  The theologian Howard Thurman put it this way: “Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” You need something to connect the passions of your soul with the needs of your world.

     Another way of putting it, a little scarier, is told in an old Buddhist story.  A seeker reported to the local guru.  “What do you want?” asked the teacher.  “To know the truth!” said the student.  “Very risky,” said the older man.  “Do you know what is demanded of you in this quest?”  “Oh yes,” said the student: “A passionate desire for Truth.”  “No,” said the guru, “a never-ending ability to admit that you are wrong.”  .

     It is a mixture, perhaps, of arrogance and humility that’s required here.  The arrogance comes with the willingness to question things we may never have questioned, that maybe even our family never questioned.  Very risky.  And the humility comes from knowing that life is so much bigger than we are, and that all our arrogance is both unwarranted and a little silly.

     There are two wonderful stories from the Hindu tradition that picture both the arrogance and the humility.  Part of what we’re about here is borrowing from any religious, philosophical or other tradition that offers us healthy spiritual nourishment. If it helps us to a wiser and more responsible path, it is equally valid, whether it comes from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism or all the other religious and non-religious traditions reflecting on life.  

     Before telling you the first story, I’ll tell you how I learned the story, which is an interesting story in itself.  A few years ago there was an Indian Hindu woman who used to attend here, always arriving late and leaving early.  For months, I wondered who she was and why she came in late and left early.  Then one Sunday we had some special music, and I snuck out to the foyer and caught her.  “Aha! I’ve caught you!” I said.  She said she knew she’d be caught sooner or later, and we laughed.

     I asked her why she came late and left early.  Well, she explained that she had to drive her son to Barsana Dham (perhaps a 35-40 minute drive from here) then had to drive back to pick him up after the service.  “Why don’t you bring him here?” I asked.

     “No!” she said quite forcefully.  “Why not?”  “Because he was bored here.”  “Why?”  She wagged a finger at me, and said, “Because you have no good stories here!”

     Now I’m not about to go toe-to-toe with a Hindu over the quantity and quality of stories!  But I was curious.  “They have better stories for him there?”  “Hah! They have hundreds of better stories!”

     “Tell me one.”  “One? I could tell you a hundred!”  “Just one.”  Very well, she said she would tell me the story he had heard last week, which they had been discussing at dinner every night because he wanted to talk about it.

     It is a lovely story about the favorite Hindu god Krishna, as a boy.  Krishna, if you don’t know, was a bit of a brat, so kids especially like those stories.  The teacher saw him chewing in class one day and asked what he was chewing – they all knew that chewing gum was forbidden in the classroom.  “Nothing,” he replied, and kept chewing.  “Liar!” she said, and she walked to his desk.  “Stand up,” she commanded, and Krishna stood up.  “Now open your mouth and let me look inside!”  Krishna opened his mouth.  She looked in, and inside of his mouth she saw — a thousand million galaxies.  That’s the kind of potential we have inside of us: a thousand million galaxies.  Possibilities beyond measure, beyond imagining.  You could get pretty arrogant believing only that!

     The second Hindu story is one I heard from the great scholar of mythology, Joseph Campbell.  It’s about Indra, who is sort of the king of all the gods, the #1 god.  In this story, Indra had a big head.  After all, he was chief among the gods, and it hardly gets better than that.  So a wise man took Indra, said there was something he needed to show him.  In Hinduism, as you know, there is a belief in reincarnation: that we keep coming back in one form of life or another.  So the wise man pointed down to the ground, and there, in formation, were thousands upon thousands of ants marching along.  “Ants!” bellowed Indra.  “What are ants to me?  What are they?”  “Ah,” said the wise man, “They are all former Indras.  Thousands upon thousands of former Indras.”  Today, king of the gods; tomorrow just another ant.  Great story!

     How do we realize some of our infinite potential?  How do we do it?  Well, imperfectly, to be sure.  The goal isn’t to be perfect; it’s to become more whole.  How do we do that?  There are clues from nature, from the world around us.

     If you’ve lived in Texas for long, you’ve heard of mesquite trees, and probably seen some.  Around here, they’re usually scruffy and small, seldom even a foot in diameter.  But if you drive a couple hours west, you can find mesquite trees, growing by rivers, that are up to six feet or more in diameter.  Same species of tree.  Without enough nourishment, it will stay small; put it by a nice river, and it can grow huge.

     Or think of the fish called Koi, those fish in the carp family that are so prized by many Asians, and found in pools at a lot of Asian restaurants.  One of the most amazing things about koi is that how big they get is determined by the size of the pond they’re in.  Put them in a fish bowl and they’ll stay very small.  Put them in a bigger tank, they grow bigger.  Put them in a very big pond, they will grow to lengths of a foot and more.  Same fish.  It’s potential can’t be unlocked without giving it the right amount of the right kind of nourishment.  And neither can our potential be realized without the right kind of nourishment and an environment of large scope. 

     Sometimes, the vast potential we may feel inside is too big to cope with, and we go back to our smaller selves and cling to them because they’re all we know.  And sometimes, we can grow from small to large in vision very quickly.  

     Just a few weeks ago, I saw an example of how this works in real life and real-time.  I was in Colorado, near Aspen, to spend a week studying with a very good British woodturner named Ray Key.  As some of you may know, woodturning is my hobby, my therapy and sometimes my obsession.  I like to study with Masters, because it’s like swimming in a very big pond or growing near a big river.  These guys have been woodturners for forty years or more, are better at it than I’ll ever dream of being, so there’s a lot to learn from them — as long as you can leave your ego at the door.  I get a little better each time, though I may never be more than a fervent amateur.

     There were eight of us in the class, covering the spectrum.  One man I’ll call Bob had turned very few pieces before coming to this class advertised as being for intermediate to advanced students.  So Ray, the teacher, suggested he focus on just one form, one bowl shape he really liked, and learn how to do that well this week.  He showed Ray some magazine photos of bowls he liked, and Ray helped set him up to turn that shape.  By the end of the week, he had made eight or ten bowls in this shape, and two or three of them were very nice.  He had created small works of beauty, done with skills he learned that week.  The ocean is very big.  Just take the sips you can handle.  Don’t worry about containing a thousand million bowls – just start with one small bowl you can handle.

     We learn life and religion this way, too: step by step by step.

     Another man I’ll call Tom had spent $5,000 on his lathe — you learned this within about thirty seconds — a couple thousand on tools, and seemed to need to be seen as good, though the truth is that he wasn’t very good.  He kept exploding his bowls on the lathe, pieces flying everywhere as he made the cut wrong on a bowl spinning at over 1,000 rpm.  And he simply couldn’t see the difference between a really nice form and an awkward one.

     Ray was as blunt as any Buddhist guru.  Once when Tom called Ray to look at a bowl he was doing to ask for suggestions, I heard Ray say, “Well, there is nothing you can do to save this form – it’s a disaster!”  Very risky studying with masters, if you can’t leave your ego at the door!

     But Tom couldn’t let go of his ego enough to open up and find a new way of looking at forms.  He couldn’t really admit that he had a heck of a lot to learn, or that he had picked up a lot of bad habits.  Day after day, he kept doing what he did at home, wanting it praised, it seemed, and day after day he exploded bowls and made graceless shapes. 

     At the end of the week, we had a three-hour class critique.  We were each to show what we thought was our best work, and our worst work.  Even more, we were to paint our worst work black, with blackboard paint.  This ruined the piece, but made it very easy to see what was right and wrong with its form.

     When Tom’s turn came, some of us were surprised with the piece he painted black, because it looked pretty good.  The one he held out as his best work looked mediocre.  Ray said, “No, you don’t have anything better than the black piece” — the one he’d just ruined by painting it.  He couldn’t tell the difference, even after a week with one of the best in the world. 

     This reminded me of so many stories from religion and life.  The title of this week-long wood-turning workshop was “Pure Form,” taught by a master wood turner whose stunning pieces are in some of the world’s best museums, art galleries and private collections.  Form is what he had an exceptional eye for.  He would be bothered by a little swelling in a curve that couldn’t have stuck out more than 1/100^th of an inch.  To him, it was glaring and grotesque.  And once he pointed it out, you couldn’t forget it either, and had to try and recut it.  And this man Tom, since he wouldn’t let go of the smaller vision he came in with, seemed to learn nothing.

     The stories of these two men are like the difference between one who goes on a spiritual journey, and Rip van Winkle.  The first returns transformed; the second spends the same amount of time away, but has only a beard to show for the time passed. 

     Life and religion are a lot like this.  While there is more than one form — for a bowl or for a life — there is still a difference between good form and poor form, and it’s a difference we’re trying to learn: in life, and here in this church.

     We have a duty to bring ourselves to our own kind of fullness.  For some, that fullness will be more intellectual, or more athletic, or assertive, or nurturing, or mystical or artistic.  We’re different people, and one path doesn’t fit all, in religion, politics or life. 

     And there is a responsibility – I think it’s a sacred responsibility – connected with serving high ideals.  Ray did it as well as any Buddhist teacher, both in bringing his art down to the level of a serious beginner, and in being flat-out honest with a pretender.  If he had flattered mediocre work, he would have betrayed his art.  And if he had just wanted to show us his own work, he would have betrayed his duty to serve us that week. 

     Serving high ideals is like picking up a Stradivarius violin: they take the measure of you, and demand a high quality of service from you.  This is true in every area, certainly including public service and religion.  When I get angry at politicians – from this or any other administration – it’s usually because they forget their job is to serve the majority of us, rather than the special interests that butter their bread.  That’s a betrayal of trust, and of their office.

     And when ministers serve lower ends, they are committing the same kind of betrayal.  When Pat Robertson says we should murder Hugh Chavez, he has betrayed every high teaching in the religion he claims to serve.  When Jerry Falwell says we should blow away terrorists in the name of the Lord, he cannot in the same breath pretend to give a damn about the teachings of Jesus.  Likewise when Rev. Hagee in San Antonio urges the president to launch a nuclear attack on Iran and start World War III – this is a betrayal of a high calling, of high ideals, and it is unforgivable.  It is serious business, and we must take it seriously.  As a theologian I’ve sometimes liked once said to a group of young preachers, “Your people expect you to take them more seriously than they take themselves, and they will not think kindly of you if you fail to do so!”

     I hope that coming here can offer you the chance to find some of the galaxies you contain, some of the arrogance needed to break away from a vision that may be too small for you, and enough of a challenge to keep you humble.  For vulnerability, humility, really can be more powerful than strength.  Remember that an ocean is bigger than a river, yet it is big because it’s lower than rivers.  That’s why their waters flow into the ocean.  Its humility gives it strength.

     A final story to make a final point about what liberal religion and this church are about, and what stays here through all the comings and goings of ministers and members.  It’s from twenty-five years ago, when I was in graduate school studying with other kinds of masters.  David taught “Arts of the Ministry,” and was one of the most gifted preachers I’ve known, with a sure grasp on what this religion business is about, on both sides.  There were about fifteen of us in the class, covering many different religions.  We met on Monday afternoon, and one Monday, before the seminar began, about four or five of the Lutheran students were complaining about the service at their church the day before.  They went on about how awful it was, how inept the preacher was, how amateurish the liturgist was, how cheesy the music, and the rest of it.  Then one of them said, “I didn’t get one damned thing from that service!”  That’s when David finally spoke up from across the room, from where he had been eavesdropping on us.  What he said was, “How hard did you try?” 

     I sometimes hear people say that life sucks, or they don’t see what there is to give thanks for, and I want to say, “How hard did you try?  How much of yourself have you invested in it?”  That’s the other part of liberal religion.  You don’t get canned, pre-packaged answers or paths here.  We can’t give you a slogan that will save you, just some imaginative building materials and a safe place to try your hand at building.  It’s a do-it-yourself kit, in an atmosphere where everyone who’s trying is doing it themselves, with the material they get from sermons, from discussions after church, and from interacting with and being around one another.

     It matters what we believe.  You’ll always hear, I hope, that it matters how we live: that life is a gift, but we owe something in return for the gift of life.  We owe the world our best efforts to bring ourselves to fullness, then to offer something back, to try and make a positive difference in the world around us.  How close to the river have we managed to live?  How big a pond have we tried swimming in?  When there are things to learn, can we let go of our smaller selves and admit we need to learn?  We need to go where nourishment is, and stay away from people and places where there is no nourishment.  And then, before we can throw a fit about how unsatisfied we are with life, there is that question always hanging in the air: “How hard did you try?”

     Inside of us are a thousand million possibilities.  There is also a clock, ticking, reminding us that we move every day toward that time when we shall not move at all, and that it is our move.  And we learn these things here in this pretty big pond, this large river of people moving through life, touching each other as we pass.  In all of life, there are so very few places like this.  That’s why I wanted to remind you, on this canvass Sunday, just why this marvelous church is worth supporting, as generously as you can.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming we’re all dropping anchor now as we settle into our church berths.  We are all creatures of habit and most of us have found the spot to tie up to during the service. We are afraid of change in a world where the only constant is change. So we make habit our cloak of familiarity. We put on the habit of coming to church and sitting where we sit. The God of your choice forbid that someone else should be sitting in your pew in exactly your place. Who do these people think they are!? We can be forgiven our propensity to resist the inevitable, and yet, we need to know that there is constancy in this covenant to which we belong. We have in essence all agreed to disagree and there lies the rub. Not willing to give up our quirky beliefs, we’re hesitant to ask others exactly what they believe. It’s not that we don’t want them to believe what they believe it’s more that we fear that their belief support system may be more user friendly than ours. Then, what would we do? We might have to change. We might have to compromise. 

          In these stormy times we find ourselves in a congregation that allows us to be ourselves, but to truly be ourselves we must reveal who we are. This is a risk. We may reveal who we are and then be sorry we hadn’t kept quiet. For we all know that great maxim, it is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought stupid, then to open one’s mouth and erase all doubts.

          Today, it is my prayer, and my hope that anchored here in this congregation, floating comfortably in our own little berths, we might open up and reveal to the battleship next to us that we are possibly nothing but a sampan, or a pleasure vessel. First it would behoove us to look beyond the exteriors of those drifting near us, and in a moment of fellowship ask permission to come aboard. We may find that the fierceness we see in others is but a projection of our own fears and insecurities.

          And now let us take a moment to get into gratitude about First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin. Yes, there are things about this church that are not perfect, there are people here who annoy us, there are situations that we find untenable, and why can’t the church see that if things were only run the way we’d like them things would be perfect. In spite of all that we are here … now, and now … here we have this fellowship – this ship of fools – and letting down our guard and turning off our security systems let us relax into appreciation. Shaking off the images that our dislike of change has cemented into our heads, let us see anew this wondrous place.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

Responsive Reading #587
We were never meant to survive

“Il n’ya pas de soleil sans ombre, et il faut connaitre la nuit.”
There is no sun without shadow and it is necessary to know the night.
A. Camus

          It is hard to say if this sermon had any effect on our townsfolk. M. Othon, the magistrate, assured Dr. Rieux that he had found the preacher’s arguments “absolutely irrefutable.” But not everybody took so unqualified a view. To some the sermon simply brought home the fact that they had been sentenced, for an unknown crime, to an indeterminate period of punishment. And while a good many people adapted themselves to confinement and carried on their humdrum lives as before, there were others who rebelled and whose one idea now was to break loose from the prison-house.
–from The Plague

          Stream of consciousness here – I’m thinking about what it’s like being a harbormaster and the port being 1^st UU.  A harbor master is there to show the way – the way to their berths. No two ships are alike. We come from different places, we know different things, and we carry different cargos. Our ports of origin are sometimes kept secret. Some of us sail under false colors. Others have received direct hits amidships, and wear our battle scars proudly.

          I’m thinking of Camus and The Plague – the novel. It was an allegory for living under the heel of Nazi oppression. How will we fare under the oppression ahead – how are we fairing now?

          The night that we must know has come about because the sun that rose in the Enlightenment began to set after the defeat of the Axis Powers. To defeat Hitler we must become like him. This truth first uttered by the Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton, is coming home to roost in our lifetime. What will we do? Can enough of us escape this time, to a land where corporatism – another word for fascism – will not reach out and tap us on the shoulder? Will there really be a national identity card,” Show me your papers!” just when nations are consciously fading into the background.

          There are those who believe that the world banks have been ruling for nearly a hundred years. Buckminster Fuller talked about this in Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth – he said the Great Pirates ruled, that they had always ruled. As men and women fall to battlefield  deaths, the rich – on both sides – watch the stock reports, and count their money. 

          Albert Camus was part of the resistance in France during the Second World War. He lived in Paris and wrote for the Underground newspaper, COMBAT. On the night of the liberation of Paris, Camus was there among the whistling bullets overhead, and the intoxication of a city that for four years squirmed under Nazi occupation. In a short essay entitled “The Night of Truth,” Camus writes, “nothing is given men, and the little they can conquer is paid for with unjust deaths. But man’s greatness lies elsewhere. It lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition.”

Now, this from Camus’ essay – The Myth of Sisyphus:

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it, and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.

It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in man’s heart: this is the rock’s victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged.

At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
—Albert Camus—

          It’s one thing to imagine Sisyphus happy, but it is imperative to ask one important question.

          What does justice look like from inside fascism? How can a person stay and be just within an unjust system? The answer lies in the harbor and ports that we can find berth in, places that allow us to tie up, refuel and prepare to set sail again. These worship services are our Sisyphean moments, time to contemplate our fates, time to amble out in the morning air, and look beyond the trees to the hills and the beauty of this earth.

          My father had thirteen months of a Sisyphean adventure when he was guest of the German government. They put my father behind bars because he had flown over their cities and ports in a Boeing model 17 – a B-17- and dropped bombs on them. At the end of that Prisoner of War adventure the Russians showed up at Stalage Luft 1, Barth, Germany.  The guards had left the night before fearing the Great Russian Bear. My father ran along side a Russian tank shouting, “Trinkvaser, Trinkvaser,” Water, Water! The Russian tank commander was smiling broadly when he handed my father, a bottle of clear liquid, that he upturned and drank nearly half way down before realizing he was chug-a-lugging  straight Vodka! In Paris he and a friend from the camp had partied, till my Dad, thinking he was the Lone Ranger, jumped a horse used to pull a Taxi and rode it off into the night.

          That was the last thing my father remembered before he awakened in a four-poster bed in the middle of a brightly lit room. The sun was streaming down through the skylight, and he was lying on clean sheets. Would wonders never cease? Then the door across the room opened. There stood a beautiful French woman. She was naked and carrying two glasses of orange juice. Do you have any idea how long it had been since he’d seen orange juice?!

          In the movie, Good Will Hunting, the character of the psychiatrist, played by Robin Williams, is assailed by Matt Damon’s character, who pointing at a painting of a small craft headed into harbor, says, “Any Port in a Storm,” Is that why you married your wife, doc, was she just a safe place to park your vessel, while the scary world went by?” Robin Williams’ character gets angry, and we think that there’s probably some truth to this accusation, but who really cares? Who among us has not detoured into relationship, and been fine with that?

          We’ve all been to other churches, other places of worship where it wasn’t okay to doubt, or fear, or have an opinion different from the senior pastor, but that’s not what we’re about, and more pointedly, that’s why we’re here because we can and do have different opinions. We fled the slave mentality of the dominant culture and echo the Camusian line, “Liberty alone draws men from their isolation; but slavery dominates a crowd of solitude.” (A. Camus, Create Dangerously, Resistance, Rebellion & Death)

          In studies done on tortured populations, it has been shown that those who get tortured don’t talk about their torture. There’s a reason for that. Those who torture tell their victims, if you talk, we’ll torture you again! Torture is negative communion, negative community. When fascism and dictatorship take over, the idea is to push a wedge between all of us, make all seem suspect to all. Homeland Security has a number that you can call to report suspicious behavior! Is anyone listening to this?!

          I recently saw a film – a documentary entitled, From Freedom to Fascism. After the film I was sure of one thing. I was going to look mostly in Canada when it came time for doing my national search for a permanent position within UU Ministry. I didn’t want to end up like Bonhoeffer, lynched in the last minutes of a fascist regime, to satisfy no one but the hangman himself.

          When Martin Luther broke from the Catholic Church, he did more than say that we were justified by faith alone. He said that it was necessary to fill all positions in government, and to realize that to disobey civil authority is the same as disobeying God. With this logic he recommends waging war and doing the killing dispassionately as if you were the instrument of God, to be the hangman if one is needed, because it is God that’s doing the hanging.

          In a 20^th Century rebuttal to Luther, Karl Barth said that it was this subservience to authority that made it impossible for the German people to rise up against Hitler.

          I don’t like feeling trapped. I don’t think any living thing likes feeling trapped.

          Back when I was writing a play about a slaughterhouse I called the Dallas Packing Company and was invited on a tour of their largest plant along the Trinity River.

          Lines of cows waited to be let into a chute where a large man held a pneumatic gun. That gun forced a ten-inch nail into the brains of the awaiting cows. There was room for two cows in the chute. Both cows were oblivious to what was going on until the first one was felled. It was the reaction of the second cow that interests me. The second cow knew immediately that legs do not voluntarily collapse beneath cows. Oh how that second cow struggled to keep the pneumatic gun from its forehead!

          When they do come for us, and I am assuming that they will. They will come for us to have national identity cards, they will come for us to mark our money and destroy the liberty of cash, they will come for us to implant chips into our bodies that will track us wherever we go. And if we go where they tell us we should not go, they will come for us a final time.

          It’s interesting to remember that it was the artists that the Nazi’s took away first. They had discovered an amazing fact. Left to nothing but the artist’s life – the artist fulfills the position of the one in society who holds up for us all the banner that reads, “Live free or die.” Every great work of art lifts up for our admiration the human spirit that will not, cannot be dominated. Why do you suppose those with money and power think that they can keep this spirit under taps? Great art has always spoken for spirit and great art always will. If we think we’re safe in a place like Austin, we’re crazy. This is one of the first places they will shake down. Art is dangerous to tyranny – why do you think it is so poorly subsidized by this government?

          But still I say this is a time to rejoice. Yes, rejoice. For those of us who are creative, and that’s what UU’s are – creative! For those of us who are creative, doubt authority and trust our own gut feelings, these will be unforgettable times. We will literally be torn from our daydreams, awakened in the light of day, we will be faced with a choice, become a public enemy of the dominant culture, or assume the fetal position.

          During the Civil War many soldiers retreated by walking backwards. Yes, turning and running would have expedited their exit, but being shot in the back has a ring to it that can be read in two ways – betrayer, or betrayed.

          I will search all over this country when it comes time for my national search. I will take the job that seems right no matter what side of the Canadian border it lies on. I will protest national identity cards, I will protest the death of the fluidity of cash, I will not, repeat not, allow myself to be injected with a homing devise like some rat in a maze.

          There’s a pictorial story that circulated recently on the Internet. It concerns a baby hippopotamus and a hundred year old tortoise. I know, it sounds like an Aesop’s fable, but when the tsunami hit the Kenyan coast it washed this year old baby hippo and its mother out to sea. The continuing waves following the tsunami brought the baby hippo back to the land. The mother hippo was lost. When the baby hippo was washed ashore it landed on this hundred-year-old tortoise. Well, you can imagine what happened. The baby hippo imprinted on the tortoise, as far as the baby hippo was concerned the tsunami washed its mother out as a hippo and washed it back in as a hundred year old tortoise. Now, think about it. This is a baby mammal and an adult reptile. Something given live birth a year ago as opposed to something that one hundred years ago, in 1906, was hatched from an egg. I think I will do as the Chinese suggest and let these pictures do the next few thousand words.

(The pictures here.)

          Conclusion (Say this during the last photo of baby hippo and “mom.”) “This is a real story that shows that our differences don’t matter much when we need the comfort of another. We could all learn a lesson from these two creatures of God. Look beyond the differences and find a way to walk the path together.” (Internet quote that came with pictures.)

          Finally, I have this caveat women leaving battered women’s shelters and returning to their husbands are not practicing “any port in a storm.” Rather they are sailing back into the storm. For a conscious person a port must be a place of relative safety. We are anchored here in this church and it is a safe port. When the clouds have cleared and the sun of freedom shines once again, we will gather here to rejoice that we kept the faith and weathered the storm together.

          I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.