PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, this morning we come here after our individual and some our communal thanksgiving day celebrations. Lots of food, lots of football. We may, in fact, be suffering from a Thanksgiving hangover. Those of us who braved shopping malls, and department stores the day after Thanksgiving may literally be suffering from shopping wounds. Calm us now as we contemplate life without all this abundance, restore us to a state in which we drink only when thirsty and eat only when hungry. May our hearts be havens for the fullness of life that includes those who suffer, not simply from lack of our obvious abundance, but suffer unto death, suffer through torture, suffer through the separations of families and the untimely death of children in war-ravaged lands. Raise in us righteous indignation at the prospect that a good deal of the terror occurring in this world is probably directly and indirectly sponsored by the United States of America.

Let us remember the words of Lao Tzu’s;

When the great Tao is abandoned,
charity and righteousness appear.
When intellectualism arises,
hypocrisy is close behind.

When there is strife in the family unit,
people talk about ‘brotherly love’.

When the country falls into chaos,
politicians talk about ‘patriotism’.

As this holiday season continues help us to not be distracted by the bread and circuses. Let us return to simplicity finding there a part of ourselves that we thought we had abandoned. Happy in the moment, confident in the journey, let us be the peace that the world is searching for, let us give the love that would save a life,  let us participate in what life offers, not what we imagine we might desire.

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

Amen

The War Prayer, by Mark Twain

(Mark Twain apparently dictated this prayer around 1904-05; it was rejected by his publisher, and was found after his death among his unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine’s anthology, Europe and Elsewhere. The story is in response to a particular war, namely the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, which Twain opposed.)

Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation

*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory —

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think.

“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory–*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(*After a pause.*) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!”

SERMON

Introduction: When the forefathers and foremothers of this country began looking at models to use, paradigms to facilitate the wording of the constitution, they had two negative examples of paradigms that they did not want to use when it came to the practice of religion.

          In New England they had the example of the Massachusetts colony in which one could not be a member of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts without also being a member of the Puritan faith.

          It didn’t make sense, but the Pilgrims who had fled religious persecution in England and Holland came to this country and immediately made laws that guaranteed that the very prejudices that they had suffered under would be perpetrated in the names of the Pilgrims in their new land – New England.

          In the southern colonies they had the negative example of the Church of England, the church of Great Britain, the church of their overlords.

          In an effort not to commit either of these crimes of prejudice the forefathers and foremothers looked to the middle colonies. And what did they find?

          They found sandwiched between the southern most colonies and those of New England three distinct, yet similar colonies – colonies organized by men who sought nothing more than to worship in the manner in which they saw fit, compelling no other men or women to worship as they worshipped.

          Roger Williams founded one of the colonies so designated. He had been educated at Cambridge and become a Chaplain to a rich family, but shortly before 1630 decided he could no longer labor under the Archbishop of Canterbury. When he arrived in Boston he was asked to replace the Pastor that was going back to England. He declined the offer because he saw no separation of church and state in the Massachusetts colony. That was the first of Roger Williams emancipating ideas. The second was what he called soul-liberty, he believed people should have the freedom to choose and practice their own religion. Roger Williams was quite a linguist and learned the native tongues around the colonies. He was called on often to mediate troubles between the colonies and the Native Americans. He thought that the Indians should be treated equally as men, and this feeling alone won him great respect among the native populations. He also felt that any lands settled by Europeans should be bought from the Indians at a fair price.

          These views got him in trouble with the rulers of the colonies so he secured lands from the natives, which occupied what is now Providence, Rhode Island. At this colony Williams established, with the help of the others who moved there, a government unique to its day – a government that provided religious liberty and a true separation of church and state.

          And as Gomer Pyle used to say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise!” Roger Williams was a Baptist.

          Rhode Island became a haven for those who were persecuted for their beliefs – Jews, Quakers and Baptists worshipped their own way in harmony with one another.

          The second colony, which served as an example for our forefathers and mothers, was the colony of Maryland founded by Lord Baltimore. Lord Baltimore was an Anglican but came under the influence of the Catholic Church and converted. In an effort to find a place where he and his family could worship in the Catholic manner, he obtained from King James a colony. King James died before the colony could be named, and when Lord Baltimore asked King Charles what he wished to call the colony King Charles suggested Terra Maria – Mary Land in honor of Queen Henrietta Mary. Lord Baltimore agreed not unhappy, I’m sure; that another queen named Mary played an important part in the Catholic worship of God. Maryland was conceived as a land where there was religious freedom and a separation of church and state.

          The third colony that influenced the writers of the Constitution was Pennsylvania – founded by William Penn. William Penn had been born an Anglican but joined the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers, when he was 22 years old. Penn was a personal friend of George Fox, the founder of the Quakers and accompanied Fox throughout Europe and England convincing many that they should obey their inner light which came directly from God, and that they should neither take their hats off, nor differ, to any man nor take up arms against any men.

          At one point William Penn was jailed for publishing his beliefs, which attacked the idea of the Trinity – Unitarians are you listening?

          The persecution of the Quakers became so volatile that finally Penn decided it would be better if the Quakers established a new, freer Quaker settlement in the New World. Some Quakers had already moved to New England, but they received the same prejudicial treatment from the Puritans as they did from the people back in England.  

          Penn and the Quakers chance came for a freer settlement in the New World when a group of prominent Quakers were granted what is now the western half of New Jersey.

          Penn immediately went to work on the charter for that colony guaranteeing free and fair trials by jury, freedom of religion and freedom from unjust imprisonments and free elections.

          Penn’s father had been owed a large sum of money from the monarchy of England and that debt was settled by giving William Penn an even larger area west and south of New Jersey. Penn called the area Sylvania – Latin for woods – but King Charles, wanting to honor William Penn’s father, named it Pennsylvania.

Conclusion: So … when the constitution was drawn up the shining examples of religious freedom offered by Roger Williams of Rhode Island, Lord Baltimore of Mary Land, and William Penn of Pennsylvania outweighed the noxious and fettered examples of the commingling of church and state and the suppression of religious freedom offered by our Puritan forbearers and similar examples offered by the Church of England loyalists to the south.

          Modern examples of the confluence of church and state abound. Think back to Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship and Hitler’s Chancellorship and the silence of the Catholic Church. In the contrary, modern day examples are evident when liberation theology literally invaded Central and South America. The Catholic Church was deploring the lack of priests in the small towns and villages of Central and South America and they made the quite obvious mistake of teaching the poor to read the Gospels. Hello? Jesus’ message is, if anything, a contraindication to Fascism and Despotism and when those peasants and the disenfranchised read what Jesus had said and how he stood up to the Roman Empire, well, enter Archbishop Oscar Romero and thousands of other priests who sided with the people over the state.

          What we have witnessed in this country in the past two elections and perhaps beyond is also a confluence of church and state. It hasn’t gotten to the point where one must be a Christian and a Republican in order to be a citizen of this country, but voter fraud and intimidation by a strong central government have left some like Nom Chomsky saying that any centralized state is a violent proposition which necessarily sides with special interest groups as opposed to representing those who elected the officials of that same state.

          Unitarians Universalists are in a unique position to be watchdogs for the rest of society. I would plead with you not to let your guard down, and to question authority before it questions you!

          And finally, to those who have fled religious traditions that were constricting and/or despotic, I would warn all Unitarian Universalists not to follow the example of the Puritans. Just because a religious group persecuted you personally does not give you permission to turn the persecution around. Religious tolerance is precisely that – the tolerance of all religions.

          Let us never forget that the paradigm for religious freedom granted in our Constitution comes from the Quakers, the Catholics and the Baptists.

          Remember what it says in, The Book of Tea, “The secret to the mundane drama of life is to hold your position while allowing others to hold theirs.”

© Emily Tietz 2006

PRAYER

Mary Oliver wrote:
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:

To love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;

And, when the time comes to let
    it go,
To let it go.

We pray for the wisdom, the courage, and the heart for all three.

Amen.

SERMON

As I sat in my living room to write this sermon, I found myself looking out the window at a canopy of trees. The chilly wind was blowing through the leaves and I could see some leaves already changing colors.

I smiled.

I love this time of year.

The air seems to be energized with promise.

Soon the leaves will flutter down and blow around our feet. Tree limbs will be bare and the soft sunlight of winter will stream through them. It’s a time energized with promise because it’s when nature intentionally lets go of things it needs to let go of. It seems to snuggle into the earth to rest. And then when the time is right, it will wake up, stretch its limbs, and flood with new life.

The new life couldn’t come, though, if the trees weren’t willing to let go of the leaves they need to let go of. And it wouldn’t come if nature didn’t then find time to rest from the labor of producing and sustaining leaves.

Plant life recognizes this need.

Humans know of this need too, though we don’t always recognize it.

Maya Angelou writes:
    Carefully
    the leaves of autumn
    sprinkle down the tinny
    sound of little dyings

    And skies sated
    of ruddy sunsets
    of roseate dawns

    Roil ceaselessly in
    cobweb greys and turn
    to black
    for comfort.

    Only lovers
    see the fall
    a signal end to endings

    a gruffish gesture alerting
    those who will not be alarmed
    that we begin to stop
    in order simply
    to begin
    again.

So many great mythologies have stories about the need to let something end before a new beginning can come.

The Christian story is the one told at Easter time. There is a death and then a resurrection. The resurrection could not happen without the death. New life cannot come unless or until something dies.

Trees and shrubs make an annual habit of willingly letting their leaves die and letting them go. Or they simply die to the ground or beg to be pruned back. They seem to trust a promise that new, vibrant life will come in time.

Plant life does its “Spring Cleaning” in the fall.

I did some this summer.

I didn’t set out to do it. I was planning a landscape design for our backyard and wanted some inspiration for the design’s structure. I recalled some things that I’d heard about feng shui and the art of placing things such that they feel good and have meaning. I thought that sounded nice, so I picked up a book in hopes of sparking some creative ideas. I ended up getting all kinds of ideas – only a few related to the landscape design which, months later, is still in process.

Something that stood out to me was the suggestion to take a good look at your stuff and clear out the clutter.

There are a number of things that qualify as clutter:

• Stuff that is unused, unloved, unnecessary or just plain messy; like stacks of junk mail or old magazines.
• Stuff that just gets you down, consciously or unconsciously; like disheartening books or unfinished projects that you know you’ll never get to so they make you feel a guilty sense of obligation every time you see them.
• Then there is the stuff that depletes you; like photos of people who disapprove of you, objects from past relationships, gifts you’ve kept only out of a sense of obligation.
• And, of course, there’s the stuff that was relevant at one time in your life, but just isn’t any more so it takes up space and keeps you rooted in the past.

My husband and I thought, “You know, it’s really time to do this.” We decided to take on the whole house – every cabinet, every closet, every drawer, every shelf, every room.

Now, this is really not as straight-forward a task as one might think. There is a reason why every object stuffed in its place is stuffed there. And in order to decide whether to keep something or clear it out, you have to look at why you’ve got it in the first place!  The answer is almost always an emotional one. Fortunately, the book warned us about this…

There’s the stuff we keep because we love it, we use it, it makes us feel good, or it has an enriching memory attached to it.

Then there’s the all the other stuff.

The stuff we keep out of fear that we, or someone else, will need it someday; or aunt so-and-so would just die if we didn’t keep it; or it’s associated with a past memory or identity that doesn’t serve us anymore but we just can’t let go.

So, with all this in mind, we rolled up our sleeves and began one room or cabinet at a time.

Over the course of two months we took carloads of stuff to Goodwill or Half Price Books, sold stuff on Craig’s List, or simply threw it away. Finally what was left was stuff that we love and use and know why we’ve kept it. The house seems to be breathing a sigh, “Thank you.”

It seems a simple task, but what happened was absolutely profound and could not be predicted. Each bit-of-stuff asked me to examine what I hold onto inside my heart or mind that enhances life and what I hold onto that really drags life down; what associations, what thought patterns, what values, what identities serve me well, and which ones keep healthy growth at bay. It was a gift; one that I’ll be mulling over for a long time.

Now for the rest of this sermon, I need to own up to the fact that I’m going to try to persuade you of something. I’m going to try to persuade you that it’s good, even essential, for human beings to regularly let go of things in order to let new life in. And I’m going to try to persuade you that we know that already. See what you think. It’s up to you.

The plant world lets go so gracefully with an innate trust that after a time of rest, vital life will come.

Humans, though, we have trouble with that. We tend to hang on to so much stuff both literally and figuratively. It eventually weighs us down or stagnates; and still we hang onto it out of fear or habit or pride or unconsciousness. It makes it darn near impossible for fresh life to find a place to root inside of us and grow.

What would happen if we followed the plant-world’s lead and regularly took inventory to let go of the things that, if we’re honest with ourselves, we know we need to let go of? What would life be like if we trusted it to know what we need and return to us fresh new vitality? I’m really not talking about physical objects here – that’s just a means of finding out what’s deeper. I’m talking about our minds and our hearts and our souls.

I think that human nature and the culture we live in make that hard to do.

Our culture values productivity – or at least busyness. We call it the “American Work Ethic,” and there’s a lot of pressure to live up to it. But it takes a seriously intentional slowing down to be able to take an internal inventory.

Notice the messages we get just from television commercials. I remember a commercial from a couple of years ago with a business woman on a subway. She looks tired but satisfied. The time is printed on the screen – 10:30 pm. The voice-over says something like, “Always make sure that your investment banker is familiar with the last train out.” Then the name of the company appears on the screen and the narrator boasts about how much their employees work for you.

Any time that I saw that commercial, I found myself thinking: If their investment bankers are regularly working from dawn to beyond dusk, what’s happening to the rest of their life?

It’s easy to think that we need to keep moving so fast that we don’t have time to pause to figure out what to let go of. So we keep accumulating. We accumulate stress, fears, guilt, resentments, stubborn pride, grief, judgments.

Of course, we accumulate joy and laughter and enrichment and delight as well.

But think about a body of water that has no outlet. Fresh water may have entered the pool, but with no outlet, even that water stagnates and becomes toxic. In the Ancient Near East, people called flowing water, “living water.” I suppose that would make non-flowing water, “lifeless.” I like that image. When we allow our spirits to flow, we are full of life. When we don’t everything deadens a bit.

So we accumulate objects, people, achievements, identities, habits, thought patterns, emotions, and if we don’t consciously sort these things out sometimes and let some go, they take over our lives and we become frustrated without knowing why.

I’m reminded of a story about two Buddhist monks who were on a journey. They came to a river which they had to cross. A woman was there who also needed to cross the river. The elder of the monks picked her up with her consent, carried her across, set her down on the other side and they went their own ways. At the end of the day’s journey, the younger monk was seething. “Why did you carry that woman across the river?!” he demanded. “You know we’re not supposed to touch a woman!” The other monk just smiled, “I left her back at the river. Why are you still carrying her?”

Perhaps the most dangerous things we accumulate are voices. Yes, voices; the ones that tell us:

• You’re not good enough to… (You fill in the blank)
• If you were really a good person you would…
  • Behave a certain way
  • Be involved in certain activities
  • Achieve certain accomplishments
  • Make a certain amount of money
  • Be interested in certain things
  • The list goes on
• You are only acceptable if…
• Your life is only worthwhile if…
• You can only be loved if…

When we’re not conscious of those voices, we’re driven each day to satiate them. And they’re insatiable. We’re driven to constantly attempt to live someone else’s idea for our life instead of living our own.

I think these voices are the most dangerous things we accumulate because they keep us from the absolutely holy task of living our lives, our lives, authentically.

I think the most important kind of clutter clearing we can do is to quiet enough to become conscious of these voices, figure out who they really belong to (a parent, a teacher, our culture…) and then learn how to release them.

These are not the voices of our higher selves. New life cannot come without letting them go. They kill us one cell at a time.

You’ll notice that the title of this sermon is, “Listening to the whispers.” It’s part of a quote that says, “We need to listen to the whispers of our higher selves so that we don’t have to hear the screams.” We can each imagine what forms the screams can take.

I think that our higher selves know that it is essential to follow the lead of the autumn trees. They whisper,

Let go.
Let go of the voices, the fears.
Let go so you can rest from what incessantly drives you to live a life
that   is    not    your    own.
Let go to make way for fresh life to fill you.

I love this time of year.

The air seems to be energized with promise.

Soon the leaves will flutter down and blow around our feet. Tree limbs will be bare and the soft sunlight of winter will stream through them. It’s a time energized with promise because it’s when nature intentionally lets go of things it needs to let go of. It seems to snuggle into the earth to rest. And then when the time is right, it will wake up, stretch its limbs, and flood with new life.

Happy autumn.

PRAYER

          Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming we are here, and wondering where happiness has gotten off to? Most of us can remember moments in our lives that we consider happy, yet each time to try to reproduce those moments the reproductions are faded replicas of the original. As we chase after happiness it seems only glimpses of it are managed as we race through our hectic schedules. We see it and it’s gone! Thoughts of happiness and sadness are images that arise in the mind and attaching to, or rejecting those images has contrary effects. Attaching to happiness pushes happiness out so fast, we’re not even sure that’s what we were feeling. Rejecting sadness brings sadness closer with every push.

          This morning our prayer is to finally let go of the idea of happiness. It’s time to stop eating the menu and start enjoying the meal. It’s time to let go and let it be – whatever it is! Time to stop and watch.

          We remember those this morning that because of war, famine, pestilence or circumstances are thrown into situations not of their own making, and are not allowed the luxury of watching their lives. May we attempt in however a halting manner to reach out to them, if not physically, then may we reach out in our thoughts – sometimes referred to as our prayers.

          May the peace that surpasses all understanding find in our hearts a place to rest? May we realize that this peaceful happiness is a guest, temporary, but still to be honored.

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

          Amen.

SERMON

Behold, we count them happy which endure.   (James 5:11a (KJV))

Suddenly people were stripped before one another and behold! as we looked on, we all made a great discovery: we were beautiful. Naked and helpless and sensitive as a snake after skinning, but far more human than that shining nightmare that had stood creaking in previous parade rest. We were alive and life was us. We joined hands and danced barefoot amongst the rubble. We had been cleansed, liberated! We would never don the old armors again.   (Ken Kesey, Garage Sale)

You must know beyond any doubt that if a teacher tells you that he or she has something to give you, it is time to run for your life. You’re dealing with a charlatan. The truth is that you lack nothing. Everything you seek you were born with and you’ll go to your grave with. En route, you may realize it or you may not, but the fact remains – it’s with you.   (John Daido Loori, Abbot, Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper, New York)

          Introduction: There was a man who loved animals. He traveled to Alaska every summer and hung out with the grizzly bears in remote areas. He took miles of videos of those bears and when he wasn’t with the bears he was traveling to schools and sharing his videos and his knowledge of grizzlies with children of all ages. Perhaps you saw the Werner Herzog documentary concerning Timothy Treadwell entitled, Grizzly Man. 

          As we humans have a tendency to do this man pushed the envelope with the grizzlies and toward the end of one summer a rogue grizzly ate him and his girlfriend. Still we must imagine Timothy Treadwell happy. He kept trying to erase the distance between himself and the bears and the final margin was eradicated by the bears themselves.

          But how can a man who is eaten by a grizzly bear be considered happy?

          Not too long ago I preached a sermon that centered on Sisyphus. Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to roll a rather large rock to the top of the hill, and of it own weight it rolled back down again, and then Sisyphus would descend the hill in contemplation and begin his efforts all over again. And as Albert Camus writes  – we must imagine Sisyphus happy.

          If these two statements are true, if Timothy Treadwell and Sisyphus are both to be considered happy, what is there about happiness that allows this to be said, or better yet, if these two statements are true – Sisyphus is happy – Timothy Treadwell is happy, then perhaps we need to think twice about whether happiness is something we’d like to let in the front door?

          In all the Dracula movies there is a particular way a vampire is allowed to enter your home. You must in fact invite the vampire inside.

          Have you been having some problems in your life? Are things cropping up that seem to be difficulties you didn’t ask for? Are there annoyances that simply seem to be a part of every day?

          Then, consider this – perhaps you have inadvertently invited happiness into your life?

          I loved Cub Scouts. In Cub Scouts you had a den mother, and the process of getting badges was arranged around the family, the mother, the home. Cub Scouts was an extension of family life. Then, came the Boy Scouts. The meetings were arranged around the men, not the families. I remember my first Boy Scout meeting. There must have been 150 of us there my first night. We were to be initiated into the Boy Scouts. Up on the stage in front of everyone fifteen of us bowing and chanting three words, foreign words – of course – “Owa,” “Tagu,” and “Siam.”  Owa – Tagu – Siam! Owa – Tagu –Siam!

          The other Scouts laughed like hyenas, pointing at the stage, holding their bellies, they really letting it out.

          We were to chant until we understood. One by one we got up laughing and joined the older Scouts.

          What we were saying was, “Oh what a goose I am! Oh what a goose I am! Oh what a goose I am!”

          And one other thing I couldn’t understand – why was it bad or funny to be a goose?

          Speaking of birds, when it comes time for their fledglings to fly Mother birds bring their customary worm to the nest, but sit too far from the nest for the fledglings to reach the worm. She sits there dangling the worm as if she didn’t have a heart. They screech and cry, they chirp and wail, but to no avail, the mother comes no closer, she sits there out of reach dangling that worm. Then a strange thing happens. The tiny little birds that have been totally dependent reach a fever pitch of excitement and leap to their deaths. Voila! Flight happens. And they didn’t even know they had wings! And they didn’t even know they had wings!

          Does this mean that grace is a lie? That the universe never gives you anything? No, I don’t think it means that. I think it means that grace is what’s dangling in front of you – grace is what you’ve been hoping for, wishing for, grace is the possibility that you may, in fact, deserve happiness.

          But the grace of happiness is like that damned worm, dangling there on television every night, the sex is there, the food is there, the cars and girls and guys are there, the clothes are there, the money is there, it’s all there dangling!

          The problem may be that happiness is not what we expect it to be – we’re thinking Owa – Tagu – Siam! when in reality it’s Oh what a goose I am!

          Zen Master Soen was meeting a group of students at Kennedy International Airport. All the students were there except one! The last student showed up late, harried, sweating and not at all at peace.  Soen Roshi said to him, “Oh it’s too bad you’re late you missed the Tea Ceremony.”  “Tea Ceremony,” replied the student, “here at Kennedy Airport?”

          “Well,” continued Soen Roshi, “perhaps you’re not too late.” Taking the student by the arm Soen Roshi pulled him into a nearby doorway. People were rushing by dragging their heavy suitcases; couples were embracing fond goodbyes, or fond helloes. Soen Roshi took a small porcelain container from the flowing sleeve of his robe, and opened it. Inside there was powdered green tea. Producing a small bamboo spoon, Soen scooped some powdered tea up and placed it into the student’s mouth. “Now,” said the Zen Master, as he closed the student’s gaping jaw, “make water!”

          In the Regular Army and undergoing Basic Training we were taken to the firing range at sunset. They passed out clips of ammunition. The senior drill sergeant locked and loaded and for the first time we saw in person tracer bullets – beautiful arcs of light flying into the Carolina night.

          What we learned there that night was how to shoot someone when it’s dark. Well, you know the enemy doesn’t always attack in the daytime.

          The retina contains two types of photoreceptors, rods and cones. The rods are more numerous and sensitive than the cones. However, they cannot see color. The cones provide the eye’s color and are concentrated in the center – the spot known as the macula. To see something at night one must look to the side of what one wishes to see.

          A more common way to experience this is when you’ve let your black dog out at night and she’s running around the yard the only time you see her is when she runs out of the center field of your vision, and the minute you turn your head she disappears.

          Happiness is the night vision of our souls. Happiness isn’t direct. It’s the Medusa of feelings; jealous, protective and perhaps not immediately discernable; not a product – nearly always a process.

          Happiness the by-product of behaviors. That’s why Timothy Treadwell and Sisyphus must be imagined as happy. That’s why George and Martha, the characters of Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf  - the characters in our Sunday short must be imagined as happy.

          The Great Way is gateless, yet –

          There are a thousand roads to it.

          The shakuhachi playing Zen Master, Doso, came to visit Zen Mountain Monastery. The shakuhachi is the traditional Japanese bamboo flute. Loori Roshi writes;

          “When Watazumi Doso came to visit Zen Mountain Monastery, I gave him a tour of the grounds. We came upon a plumber who was working on our new bathhouse. Cast-iron piping lay outside the building. Doso playfully picked up a three-foot-long piece and began to play it as though it was a shakuhachi flute. Although the pipe had not holes in it, he was able to create a surprisingly wide range of sounds and haunting melodies.

          At another time Doso gave a concert at the Zen Center of Los Angeles and soon after the performance started, a LAPD helicopter flew into the area and hovered overhead. TUM! TUM! TUM! TUM! Doso’s flute immediately picked up the rhythm and developed a counterpoint. An infant cried. Doso’s flute responded. A car drove by at high speed. The flute whizzed with it. Doso’s concert included the totality of all the sounds that were happening around us. He blended, merged, answered everything he heard, incorporating it into his experience and expression, rather than being distracted by it.”

          Conclusion: We are on the launch pad. Our vehicle of happiness fueled and ready to go. The count down began years ago. Will we die on the launch pad, gussied up in our earth suits, not sure we can fly? Or will we allow ourselves to enter the way, to travel the path!

          Take time to show who you are. Don’t worry that you won’t be liked, or that people will run away when you unmask. That fear is nothing more than our own heart’s racing with the possibility of our own freedom. Do the world and yourself a favor and show us who you really are! That feeling you have when you’re real, when you show and tell others what makes you tick, when you own it and tell your story – that feeling … it’s happiness.

          Owa! Tagu! Siam!

          Amen.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, this morning we remember the words of Rabbi Abraham Heschel, “Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy.” Too often we make grandiose plans about how our lives would/could or will be. We map strategies, we enlist the help of others, we ignore warning signs and push ahead with our plans. There’s an old saying, updated a bit which runs when human beings makes plans, God, the ground of our Being, the mystery beyond all mysteries laughs out loud. No one likes the idea of their plans not working out, but if laughter is added to disappointment it is possible to engender scorn. Fritz Pearl, the famous Gestalt therapist had a book entitled, Don’t Push the River.” The problem is we sometimes forget there is a river whose streams make glad the city of humankind. We forget that we are not separate from the Cosmos that surrounds us that as surely as flowers follow the sun, we rise each morning following that same life-giving light. We seek more consciousness, more awareness. If a man in a rowboat sees another empty row boat drifting toward him he takes an oar and gently pushes the empty rowboat aside. But if the rowboat drifting toward him is occupied, voices are raised, shouts of warning arise and before we know it two men are battling each other in the middle of the stream. Let us be empty rowboats as we go through our hectic days. Let us see other as empty rowboats, also. Let us feel the currents of life and flow with them – remembering that rich or poor, black or white, Republican or Democrat our ultimate destination is universally the same.

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

Amen.

SERMON: Fortunate Blessings

Introduction: A Chinese farmer came out one morning to find a fine stallion grazing in his pasture. His neighbors came by and congratulated him on his good luck. The farmer replied, “Could be good news, could be bad news.”

          Shortly thereafter the horse ran off. The neighbors gave their sympathy for losing such a fine horse. The farmer replied, “Could be good news, could be bad news.”

          The following week, the stallion returned and brought with him four wild and beautiful horses. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on his extraordinary good luck. The farmer replied, “Could be good news, could be bad news.”

          The farmer’s only son was good with horses. He had three of them trained when he was bucked off the fourth. He landed on his leg and it broke at both the hip and the knee. He would walk with a terrible limp the rest of his life. The neighbors brought food and sympathy. The farmer replied, “Could be good news, could be bad news.”

          The War Lords of the region were fighting the War Lords of another region. They traveled throughout the region conscripting the young men. All the young men from the farmer’s village were taken except the farmer’s son who was unfit for military service. The neighbors came over to sympathize. The farmer replied, “Could be good news, could be bad news.”

          In the War all the young men of the farmer’s village were killed. No one came to the farmer’s house to commiserate or congratulate.

          I recently spent two days and three nights in the Berkshires. The foliage was at its peak. This section of the Berkshires is known as the lung of Connecticut. The majority of the wooded hills and meadows belong to the people of Connecticut and are held in trust. No one can cut the timber, plow up the undergrowth or otherwise disturb these nearly pristine forests.

          I was there to visit with William Spear. I’m not surprised that you haven’t heard of Bill Spear, but he’s a mover and a shaker in the world of disaster relief – especially disaster relief for children. Back when I was studying at the Yale School of Drama in 1990, Bill called me from Chelyabinsk, Russia. There was a great need for blood since the meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor and Bill had made arrangements with the Yale/New Haven Hospital for blood. He called me to transport the blood from the Yale/New Haven Hospital to the New Haven airport where it would be flown to Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains of Siberia, considered, at the time, to be the most polluted and ravaged city on the planet. Bill went there to work with thousands of children dying from leukemia. He went without a visa (it was then a closed city) and was the first American to enter the city. There he spoke with hundreds of physicians and nurses throughout the region and established an extraordinary program, still in existence today, which feeds and supports 300 people a day, all through volunteer work. He was received by the Mayor of Chelyabinsk and given a key to the city as well as being acknowledged as an honorary staff member of the hospital where the program takes place. To this day Bill continues to work with the medical staff that attends to thousands of children dying from leukemia and the effects of radiation poisoning.

          I had gone to the Berkshires to see Bill to convince him that he should come to First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin and be our Distinguished Speaker for the spring of 2008.  I am here to report that he has agreed to come – as he put it in an email to me – “I’m happy to have you back in my life and as for spring of 2008, sure — I’m in.  I’ll just change that appointment I had to get my teeth cleaned, and we’re all set. Bill”

          The man is not only a great humanitarian but also has a droll sense of humor.

          While I was there I went ahead and had Bill Spear, the health expert, give me a check up.

          I had been concerned when I went to see Bill that there were life-threatening issues and there weren’t. That’s good. Bill was surprised to hear from me after 15 years and he said, people didn’t usually drop back into his life unless they were in a crisis situation in their lives. So … if my crisis wasn’t physical, then it must be spiritual, right?

          Bill Spear is the head of the Fortunate Blessings Foundation.
The term “fortunate blessings” is associated with the symbol for “wind” in the Asian art of feng shui, based on the I Ching, the ancient oracle. The I Ching identifies the primal qualities present in the universe and all beings; the quality of “wind” signifies the blossoming of energy, prosperity, expansiveness and potential transformation. In the name of Bill’s organization, “fortunate blessings” symbolizes an openness to the experience of gratitude for whatever life brings. (Repeat this line)

          Bill was with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross when she was dying. Opra did a program on the famous psychologist and innovator in the field of death and dying. The television crew traveled to Elizabeth’s house and many people were on the program to thank her for all the work she had done in the area of our mortality.

          Bill said that when the program was over and the lights had been taken down, and the television personalities had departed and it was just he sitting there by her deathbed she looked around the room and said, “I failed.”

          Bill looked at her and asked what she could possibly mean by that statement?

          She replied that there were two courses in death and dying – one was the course on how to help people through their impending deaths, that course she had designed and completed with an A+. The other course was on being able to receive the love and affection of those who wished to help you when you were dying. In that course, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had failed miserably.

          This isn’t surprising. People who give are giving because that’s what they know how to do, but this doesn’t mean that they are also able to receive.

          I’m a person that has trouble receiving. Jesus said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Jesus knew.

          What I want is to tell you a story. It’s one of Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen’s stories and it’s called “The Final Lesson.”

          “When I first met Thomas, he was over seventy, a family-practice physician who had been in solo practice for almost fifty years. Whole families, from grandparents to grandchildren, looked to him for help in their trouble, counted on his counsel, and called him their friend. He looked the part too, gray-headed, kindly, his body as spare and gnarled as an ancient oak tree.

          At the time that we met, he proposed that we open a series of conversations about his life. He had done some reflection in recent years but felt that sharing the process at this point might be helpful in readying himself for death.

          Thomas felt death to be an unqualified ending to life. Raised a Catholic, he had left the church early and embraced science as a way to bring order to the chaos of life. It had not failed him.

          It surprised me that a man this altruistic, compassionate and reverent toward the life in others, this man awed by the beauty of anatomy and physiology, held no religious or spiritual beliefs. Curious, I asked him about the circumstances under which he had decided to leave the church. Open and frank about other details of his long life, he was reticent in the extreme about this. He had left at sixteen over a specific happening. I never found out what it was.

          Very early on in our discussions, I asked him how he saw his relationship to his patients. Looking at a small figurine of a shepherd with his flock that a patient of mine had given me, he smiled and said, “Like that.” The shepherd was a steward of the life in the flock, he protected them from danger, helped them to find nurture and fulfill themselves. He delivered their young. He found strays and brought them back to the others.

          Thomas told me many stories of his shepherding and the life of his flock. We examined these stories together, sharing our thoughts and perspectives. In the telling and the reflection, he seemed to be unfolding a much deeper sense of what his life had meant to others and what he had stood for. In these discussions, he often used the odd Victorian word: they “sheltered” with him. He was their safety, their support, their friend. He was there for them, constant, vigilant, and trustworthy. The person of a shepherd emerged as a symbol for wholeness.

          Who did he shelter with, who was the shepherd’s shepherd? “No one,” he said, the words holding more pain than he had expressed before. It became clear that he did not believe that there was a place of sheltering for himself. Shepherd though he was professionally, personally he had become separated from the flock, a nonparticipant, a lost person. He seemed unwilling to go much further with this.

          Puzzled, I asked him to make up a story about a lost lamb, and haltingly he described a lamb that had been lost for so long that he could not even remember there was a flock. He had learned to survive by himself, to eat what was available, to hide from predators. “Does this lamb know that his shepherd is looking for him?” I asked. “No,” he said, “the lamb had done something very bad and the shepherd had forgotten him.”

          “As a shepherd yourself, would you look for a lost lamb who had done something bad?” He seemed puzzled. I reminded him of the young patient from the projects he had told me about, the one he had taken on as a guardian from the juvenile courts, the girl who eventually went on to college. I asked him why he had gone after her and brought her home. “Why,” he said, “she was one of mine.”   On Christmas Eve I received a call from his hospice nurse. Thomas had been in a coma all day. Would I come? As soon as I saw Thomas, I realized that he was dying. His breathing, always labored, had become shallow and intermittent. The nurse with him was young and seemed a little uncertain and so I invited her to stay as I talked to him. He did not respond in any way. We changed his sheets and made him more comfortable. Then we sat down together to wait. Gradually the space between his breaths lengthened and after a while his breathing stopped.

          There seemed nothing more to do. I stood for a time at the foot of Thomas’ bed, thinking about him and wishing him well. Then I left.

          It was dark and cold Christmas Eve night. Holding my keys in my pocket, I huddled into my coat and walked a little faster. I had almost reached my car when church bells throughout the city began ringing. For a moment I stopped, confused. Could the bells be ringing for Thomas? And then I remembered. It was midnight. The Shepherd had come.”

          On the website for Fortunate Blessings.org there is a quote from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. It reads, “Should we shield the canyons from the windstorms, we would never see the beauty of their carvings.”

          Life has a way of carving us into shapes that are appropriate for who we are and the pressures that were put under.

          As some of you know I traveled to Washington, DC recently to have a meeting with the Regional Subcommittee of Candidacy. I wasn’t worried about this meeting. Don’t forget I’ve been before Grace Presbytery when I was a Presbyterian and Grace Presbytery’s name is ironic to say the least. Those people were just about anything but full of grace. Yet, I had passed that committee and began the process of becoming a Minister of Word and Scrament. Then, when I had switched to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) I had had three meetings with folks from the Brazos Region. True, the head of the region committed suicide a month after I had my meeting with him, but since I don’t suffer from magical thinking I was sure that our meeting had had nothing to do with his demise. My two other meetings with committees from the Brazos Region had produced no more suicides and as a matter of fact, I had rather enjoyed those committees. They had always given me good feedback as to what my strengths seemed to be, and areas of weakness that I might work on. When I decided to come over to the UUA I had only one meeting with the Brazos Region left – my ordination interview.

          So on my way to Washington DC I wasn’t as worried about the subcommittee on candidacy as I was about flying on Friday the 13^th. Yeah, I’m a little superstitious.

          I got to All Souls Church in Washington DC early. I knew I didn’t want to rush into a meeting out of breath and harried. I sat in the Thomas Jefferson bench in the main sanctuary at All Souls and wrote my thoughts about what questions are – if you were here last week you heard those thoughts. I had so much time I practiced my Tai Chi for 20 minutes. Believe me when I tell you that when I entered that meeting room my feet were grounded and I was not afraid. They asked me if I’d like to say some words before they lit the chalice. I did. I quoted something from The Death of Empedocles by Holderlin.

          And openly I pledged my heart to the grave and suffering land, and often in the consecrated night I promised to love her faithfully, until death unafraid. With her heavy burden of fatality and never to despise a single one of her enigmas, thus did I join myself to her with a mortal chord.

          The committee started out by asking me two questions about someone who wasn’t in the meeting. I thought this strange, but decided to answer. The questioning continued and I thought all in all it was going rather well. At one point someone asked me something I didn’t know, so I simply said, “I don’t know.” I figured honesty was better than BSing my way through a non-answer.

          When they called me back into the room I was shocked to find out that they were not going to offer me candidacy. They considered me inauthentic, poetical and seething with an undercurrent of anger. I looked around the room, not sure who in the room they might be talking about.

          The odd thing about these declarations was the fact that only two people out of ten at the table were looking at me while they were being read. The man who was reading them to me, he was looking at me, and a young black woman two seats from my left was able to make contact with me from time to time. The others sat with their eyes cast into their laps. They honestly seemed ashamed.

          When the meeting was over I walked around and shook each person’s hand. I thanked the two who had been able to look me in the eyes for being able to do that, and yes, I thanked them loud enough for the others to hear.

          The upshot of all this is much to my surprise the Regional Subcommittee on Candidacy had handed me a fortunate blessing in disguise. “Could be good news, could be bad news.” And like Jacob in the Hebrew Bible lesson this morning, I have wrestled with men, I have wrestled with God, I have wrestled with Satan, also known as my shadow self, and in the process I have been mightily blessed.

          They recommended a year’s worth of counseling and told me that I needed to get an authentic view of the UUA since, obviously my view had been tainted by – and these are their words – by being paid more than over half the members of the RSCC had ever been paid and by serving the third largest congregation in our region – a congregation larger than most of them had ever served.

          My mother told me that when God closes a door he opens a window. My mom had a tendency to get those sayings confused. But I knew what she meant. The window that’s been opened for me will be gently stepped through rather than jumped out of.

          It is a privilege to serve this congregation as your shepherd and it looks very much like I will return to more familiar pastures where the majority of the sheep look to the great Shepherd.  And, you know what, that’s just fine by me.