Surprised by Joy

Elwyn Brooks White, better known as E. B. White, may be best known as the author of Charlotte’sWeb and Stuart Little, or, by people of a certain age, the co-author of a little volume often called Strunk & White or, more accurately The Elements of Style.  (Some people shudder at the memory of it; others delight in its clarity and decisiveness.  Most are surprised to know that it was written by the same author who wrote Charlotte’s Web.)

For 50 years White was a contributor to The New Yorker, most often writing what the magazine calls "Newsbreaks" which are short, witty comments on oddly worded writing, under various categories such as "Block That Metaphor."  (I got some of my love of words from these pieces, which my mother delightedly shared with me.)  White won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for (in the words of the award), "his letters, essays and the full body of his work.”  He also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963.

In my research I came across this description of White that I just have to share with you all.  James Thurber, who also delighted my mother and me, once described White as a quiet man who disliked publicity and who, during his time at The New Yorker, would slip out of his office via the fire escape to a nearby branch of Schrafft's to avoid visitors whom he didn't know.  Thurber wrote:

Most of us, out of a politeness made up of faint curiosity and profound resignation, go out to meet the smiling stranger with a gesture of surrender and a fixed grin, but White has always taken to the fire escape. He has avoided the Man in the Reception Room as he has avoided the interviewer, the photographer, the microphone, the rostrum, the literary tea, and the Stork Club [a trendy nightclub in Manhattan]. His life is his own. He is the only writer of prominence I know of who could walk through the Algonquin lobby or between the tables at Jack and Charlie's and be recognized only by his friends.

White and his family came to live full-time at their farmhouse on the coast of Maine.  By all accounts he loved his life on the farm, relishing the delights – and there’s that word again – of the natural world that surrounded him.  In fact, he once stopped in his barn, captivated, watching a spider spinning her egg sac.  That spider eventually became “Charlotte.”  The Newbury Award winning author Kate DiCamillo, in her foreword to Charlotte's Web, quoted White as saying, "All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world." All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.”

I tell you all of this to give you something of the background of the man who said the quote that’s at the heart of this morning’s service:

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

It’s also sometimes remembered as (and I prefer this version):

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

There’s a condition known as “compassion fatigue,” or, “secondary traumatic stress.”  I’d wager that many of us, maybe most of us here, know at least a little something about it.  I cannot tell you how many people have told me that they’ve had to stop watching the news because they just can’t take it (especially since the Presidential election this past year, but honestly, for years and years before that as well).  We see:

• The seemingly constant shootings of unarmed black men by police officers who too often face no charges;
  
• The obscene income gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” – a gap that is growing, leaving far too many people struggling just to eke out the most basic level of living;
  
• The rape culture in which we live and which is taken as the norm, apparently accepting (or ignoring) that a sexual assault occurs on average once every 2 minutes, and that one-in-five women will be raped at some point in their lives (a percentage that is significantly higher for women in LGBTQ communities);
  
• The so-called school-to-prison pipeline, pandemic in communities of color, which can be argued to begin as young as preschool, where black children are roughly 3 ½ times more likely than white children to receive one or more out-of-school suspensions;
  
• Environmental degradation so profound that many scientists think are nearing the point of no return, if we haven’t passed that already;
  
• Utter disregard for any kind of civil discourse, or even belief in things like “facts;”
  
• The intentional and explicit targeting of people in historically marginalized communities, rolling back any progress seen toward societal recognition of their full humanity;
  
• The disintegration, here and abroad, of the building blocs of democratic societies;

Of course, I could go on (and on, and on), yet just hearing such a list threatens to burn out even more people.  I recently re-watched the movie Where the Wild Things Are, in which the wild thing Carol at one point angrily shouts a litany of things that are wrong on their island, among which he includes the fact that the sun is dying and will have essentially burned out in something like 5 to 6 billion years.  The point?  Live is hard.

And I haven’t even brought up all of the local, personal tragedies and traumas we face – people we know who have just received serious health news, or our own receipt of a serious prognosis; the death of loved ones; accidents with catastrophic consequences (and even not so catastrophic ones); job loss or insecurity; addictions; divorces …

I could go on with this list, too, yet the point is the same:  life is hard.  And there is so much that is wrong with the world that many of us wake in the morning desiring to save the world.  Or we go to bed nearly broken by the secondary traumatic stress we find ourselves having to endure.  It’s as if the world itself, as if life itself, is one of J. K. Rowling’s Dementors – creatures who drain “peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them.”  The world we live in threatens to such the joy from our lives, and has already done so in some cases.

There’s a story from the Buddhist tradition which tells of a mother who’d just gone through the death of her child.  Distraught, overcome, she seeks out the Buddha, whose teachings are said to be “medicine,” and begs him to bring her son back to life.  The Buddha tells her that she must bring him a mustard seed from a house that has known no suffering.  The woman goes door to door, asking for a mustard seed, but when she asks if there had ever been any suffering there, at each home she is told of some difficult thing the family had had to endure at some point.  After going to all of the houses in her village, the woman, undaunted, begins to visit neighboring villages, yet her experience is always the same.  Over time, though, the woman’s frantic desperation begins to be somewhat tempered by the kindness of the people she meets, the empathy and care she experiences, the evidence that even despite their sufferings the people she visits have gone on with their lives.  Finally, the woman returns to the Buddha.  “Have you found the seed from the house that has known no suffering?” he asks.  “I have found no such home,” she replied, “yet I now know that I am not alone.”  “That is good,” the Buddha said.  “I can not return your dead child to life, but I can return your life to you.  Go in peace.”

The Protestant theologian Frederick Buechner once wrote:

"You are alive. It needn't have been so. It wasn't so once, and it will not be so forever. But it is so now. And what is it like: to be alive in this maybe one place of all places anywhere where life is? Live a day of it and see. Take any day and be alive in it. Nobody claims that it will be entirely painless, but no matter. It is your birthday, and there are many presents to open. The world is to open."

“[T]here are many presents to open.  The world is to open.”

E. B. White was born in 1899, and died in 1985.  During those years he certainly saw how painful, how cruel, how hard life can be.  He saw wars, the civil rights struggle, the Great Depression.  He knew how much the world needed saving. 

And yet …  (Those who know me could have guessed that there’d be an “and yet” before we were through here, right?)

White knew how hard life in this world can be, and yet he also knew life’s wonders.  And so, he arose each morning “torn by the desire to save the world and to savor the world.”  For years I’d thought that it was this phrase, this seeming conundrum, that was the important point of thiS quotation.  I’ve lately come to realize that it’s actually what I’d thought was the throw-away that is the point.  “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”  This makes it hard to plan my day.  He is talking about making an active, conscious choice.  A choice he makes each day.  He knows the world needs saving – oh how we know that too, we know so, so, so many ways that our world needs us to work for its salvation.  He also knows how worthy the world is of being savored.  And he is torn, as so many of us are.  Yet he also knows that it is within his power to choose where he will put his focus.  He gets to plan his day; it isn’t planned for him by either the savoring nor the saving.  And so it is for us, too.

It’s not easy, but as Buechner said, nobody claimed that it would be “entirely painless.”  That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, though.  And I’m going to tell you this morning — and remind myself — that it’s absolutely possible.  We … can … choose … day-by-day … whether we have the strength today to save, or whether we need to restore ourselves with a little savoring. 

One last thought:

While it’s true that we often need to make a choice, we don’t always.  Sometimes that savoring can be part of the saving.  In fact, you might say that sometimes the ability to savor the world saves the act of striving to save it from completely burning us out.

A few weeks back I told the story of the activist Emma Goldman, who is remembered as saying “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”  It’s more likely that what she actually said was something more like, “what’s the point of a revolution if you can’t dance?”  Either way, the point is the same.  When we’re involved in the work of striving to save the world, when we’re knee deep in the effort to address the ubiquitous injustices we can’t help but see all around us, it is essential that we take – that we make – the time to dance, sing, laugh, savor.  Rev. Alex put it really well last week:  “Pick your tool, if you have not already. And continue your work, side-by-side. And, sing some work songs while you are at it.”

Look around you.  The people you are sitting with, and most likely you, yourself, are people who are involved in the work of making the world a better place, have been involved in that work … some of you for a very long time.  Look around you.  [Seriously, look at the people around you.]  Drink in their beauty (remembering to remember your own, of course).  Let their commitment(s) inspire you.  There are so many good examples in this room of people committed to making this world a better, more just, more love-filled place.  Savor one another.  And then let’s back the work of saving this hurting, beautiful world.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Amazing! Grace

These are the explorations offered during worship at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia this past Sunday.

[Listen to the sermons]

Amazing! Grace: Was Blind But Now I See  ~  Wendy Repass     I was listening to a friend describe grace. She’s an alcoholic but she’s been sober for several decades now. She said, “how is it that I have remained sober, whereas others have gone back to drinking? But for the grace of god go I.”

And this struck a chord with me deeply. I thought about Mary who over the years would get angry more and more often during times of trouble. When she had a baby, Mary’s fits of rage became frequent- blaming, yelling, screaming and hitting in anger at loved ones.

I could see her spiraling into this recurring behavior, completely blind to the effect she had on other people. Lashing out at loved ones at the moment when she needed support the most.

How is it that she cannot stop herself and snap out of it? Why does she seem blind to her own behavior?

Perhaps grace is like when you’re working on a math problem, and you work at it and try to do it, but you just can’t get it. Then you put it down. A day later, or a week and all of a sudden you’re like “Ah-Ha!”

Or maybe it’s like when you see someone else mired in the same kind of addiction you have and you wonder, wow, how did I ever break free of that? People tell you it’s because you worked hard, but you know deep down inside that there was a time you couldn’t even see, that you were absolutely blind. And you wonder in amazement at how you got here.

Or maybe it’s like what happened to John Newton. John was a slave ship captain who enjoyed “an easy and creditable way of life” (1) until he was forced to resign because of health problems. He got an administrative position, but he eventually got involved with a church and became a minister. Years later, Newton would write, "I think I should have quitted [the slave trade] sooner
had I considered it as I now do to be unlawful and wrong. But I never had a scruple upon this head at the time; nor was such a thought ever suggested to me by any friend." (1)

He wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace”. Eventually public opinion started to turn away from slavery. 30 years later he would write a popular pamphlet talking about his days as a slave trader, apologizing for it and campaigning against slavery.

30 years is a long time. But grace was seeping like water onto a desert in Newton’s world. The culminating effect of changing attitudes in society, the fact that he had to stop working at that job and his entry into the ministry all culminated in him gradually being able to see what he had done.

May we see even though today we are blind. May we recognize our own blindness so that we might have compassion for the blindness of others.

“Let the desert rejoice.... For waters shall break forth in the thirsty ground....The wasteland will be turned into an Eden.... You will become like a watered garden.”(2)

(1)   “Africans in America”, PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p275.html

(2)   Excerpts from Isaiah, Bible as arranged in “Addiction & Grace”, Gerald G. May, 1991.

Amazing!  Grace.  ~  Erik Walker Wikstrom     Amazing Grace.  Perhaps one of the most popular hymns of all time that nobody every really sings.  At least, not the way it was meant to be sung.  That first line?  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me”?  It’s been recast as:

·         That saved a soul like me . . .

·         That saved and strengthened me . . .

·         That saved and set me free . . .

The great Protestant writer Kathleen Norris has lamented that these alterations are “laughably bland.”  The whole point is that the narrator of the song has known a wretched life . . . absolutely wretched, horrible . . . and not just the outer circumstances of his life, but his inner life as well . . . he’s been a wretch.

And John Newton certainly knew both things.  He was, as is now well known, involved in the English slave trade – first as a sailor on slave ships and then, eventually, as a captain.  He was involved with the buying and selling of people.  Or, to look at it another way, he was involved with the debasing and dehumanizing of people to such an extent that they could be seen as commodities.  From the abolitionist perspective he developed later in his life, and from our perspective today, that earlier time was certainly most wretched.

And personally he knew a wretched existence as well.  In his days as a sailor he was continually getting in trouble on ship.  He wrote obscene songs about his captain, songs that were so popular with the crew that they even started singing along.  (Not so popular with his captain, I’d imagine.)  His language was so profane, in fact, that in a profession rather well known for its salty talk, he was (and I love this line) “admonished several times for not only using the worst words the captain had ever heard, but creating new ones to exceed the limits of verbal debauchery.”   On one occasion he got himself into so much trouble – and I truly wish I knew what he’d done – that he was chained up below decks like the slaves they were carrying and was then himself sold off the ship into slavery in Sierra Leon.  (I’m thinking he knew a thing or two about wretchedness.)

He was saved from his enslavement by another ship’s crew, the crew of the Greyhound, in whose company he then set sail.  It was while aboard the Greyhound that he experienced another kind of wretchedness – a severe storm that challenged the ship to its core.  Newton watched as a crewmate was washed overboard from a spot where he’d been standing only a moment earlier.   When he and another shipmate were set to operating the pumps, they had to lash themselves to them so as not to be washed away.  And Newton himself spent eleven hours on deck steering the boat – and this, after hours and hours of battling the storm in other positions.

At one point, after speaking with the captain about a possible plan of action, Newton said, “If this will not do, then Lord have mercy on us.”  They made it through, and surviving this storm provided an opportunity for Newton to reconsider his life.  He saw their survival as nothing but God’s mercy, yet he knew that he had not only neglected his own faith but had actively opposed it . . . in himself and others.  He was want to ridicule people who spoke of religious things and even reveled in declaring that their God was nothing but a myth.  And now he felt as though he’d just been saved by this God he ridiculed.  He felt as though he, a wretch of a man who’d known a wretched life, had just been saved and suddenly it seemed as if he’d been blind his whole life before and now could see.

Powerful stuff, right?

Of course, we’re not wretches, right?  I mean, none of us could say that we’ve lived the kind of wretched life John Newton had, right?  That’s why we sing all sorts of things other than “saved a wretch like me.”  Right?

When the Worship Weavers were discussing this service in our meeting last month one of the members said that they resonated with the song as someone who was thirty-five years sober.  Looking back at their life of active alcoholism was without question or doubt looking back at a wretched life, a life of blindness.  Looking at their life’s trajectory, the gift of sobriety, the grace of sobriety, was a “sweet sound” indeed.

This got me to thinking about one of my teachers, Gerald May.  Gerry was a psychiatrist who was interested in spiritual direction – he was also the younger brother of the more famous Rollo May.  In his fantastic book Addiction and Grace, Gerry makes the point that there are all kinds of addictions – the obvious ones like alcohol, drugs, food, and gambling are just the tip of the iceberg.  He suggests that anything we can’t give up, anything that we find ourselves locked into and unable to let go of, can be understood as an addiction.  So, some people are addicted to the accumulation of wealth, others to “being nice,” and others to “being right.”  Does any of this ring a bell?

And one of the things about addiction is that not only are we caught up in it, virtually powerless to let go of it, but that this is true to our own detriment.  It’s not just that you think that making money is a really good thing, it’s that you think so to such an extent that you spend all of your time involved in its acquisition even to the point of being unable to actually enjoy any of it.  Or you think that “being nice” and keeping everybody happy is so important that you aren’t nice to yourself and you, in your own life, are anything but happy.  Addictions warp our minds and our hearts, twist our souls so that the good we seek becomes a harm – and we end up becoming trapped, enslaved.

Some say that that’s what happened with Thomas Jefferson and slavery – he was intellectually opposed to the inhuman practice, but he was so caught up in the lifestyle and the ways of life of his day that he could not let go of it.  Enslaved persons were necessary in his kind of life, and despite the dissonance between the institution of slavery and his values about freedom he couldn’t let it go.

That was certainly true of John Newton.  Even after his conversion experience he continued to run slave ships for several years, although each trip became increasingly more difficult for him until he finally collapsed from the strain, never to sail again.

The truth is, my friends, that each of us . . . (I was tempted to write “some of us” in order to give you an out and increase the chance that you’d feel positively toward me, something I’ve been known to struggle with) . . . but the truth is that each of us knows our own kind of wretchedness.  Each of us has our own blindness.  Each of us knows that place – oh, probably not to John Newton’s extent but don’t let’s let that stand in the way of our acknowledging that we do, in fact, know it – and if we don’t also know the sweet sound of grace then we know what it feels like to yearn for it.

And when we feel it – like the calming of the seas that have been throwing us about; like the breaking of the storm clouds, the cessation of the rain, and the coming out of the sun – we may well be surprised.  Amazing!  Grace!  And that’s part of the truth about grace, too.

Last week I said that there is no limit to grace, that it abounds, that it exists all around us and that we just have to be open to it.  But it’s not as easy as that, is it?  It’s not as simple.  There’s something fundamentally mysterious about grace; it’s beyond our control.  I don’t even know for sure whether we should say that grace is that moment, that event, in which our lives are opened up or if it’s that ineffable “energy” (for want of a better word) that’s moving in, and around, and through our lives making those moments, those events, possible.  And that’s probably okay.  It’s okay for us to front some mysteries and allow them to remain mysterious.

What I do know is that there are “many dangers, toils, and snares” in this life.  I know that all of us have our moments of wretchedness.  And I know that I wish grace on us all.