Let's Not Keep From Singing

These are the reflections I offered to the congregation I serve on Sunday, May 19, 2019.  They had just a few days earlier received the news of my decision to bring our eight-year mutual ministry to an end, as well as the decision of our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, to resign.  This was my first opportunity to talk with them after they received the news.

In case anyone's interested, I sang, instead of read, the two verses of the hymn at the end of these Reflections.

What can I say?

Many of you received an email on Friday from Adam Slate, the President of the Board.  For those of you who are new here, or may not have gotten it for some reason, the email was an announcement of my decision to step down as Lead Minister effective at the end of this church year (June 30^th).  It also shared the news that our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, has also made the decision to resign.

For some I know this is a shock; some have no doubt been anticipating it.  Since the email went out I’ve heard from a lot of folks who call this their spiritual home.  They’ve shared with me expressions of their sorrow, their confusion, their anger; their feelings of loss and grief; their fears for the congregation’s future.  I know all of those emotions, because I’m feeling them too.

And, though no one has said this to me yet, I am certain that there are people who are feeling something of a sense of relief, hoping that the painful divisiveness of, especially, the past couple of years may soon come to an end.  If I didn’t admit that I understand this feeling too, I wouldn’t be telling you the truth — it’s been a hard few years.  And while I do not share these feelings, I have no doubt that there are some people who received this news gladly, happy that the goal they have been working for has finally been achieved.

All of this is to say that there are undoubtedly a wide array of emotions in our community, our church family right now.  In this sanctuary right now.  There are undoubtedly a wide array of emotions within any one of us, individually!  Emotions are so rarely clean and simple; most often they are convoluted and more than a little tangled.  Complicated, to say the least.

In the days and weeks ahead, and in the months and maybe even years after I’ve left, it will be important to remember that everyone has a right to their own feelings about this.  Not only do we not have to think alike — as the well-known maxim goes — to love alike, we don’t have to feel the same way as one another either.  Yet if we stay in covenant with one another — not something we’ve always been able to do, of course — then the words of the late 18^th and early 19^th century Universalist preacher and theologian Hosea Ballou will hold true:

If we agree in love, no disagreement will do us any harm;

Yet if we do not, no other agreement will do us any good.

"If we agree in love, no disagreement will do us any harm; yet if we do not, no other agreement will do us any good."

Christina and I are writing letters in which we’ll share our stories about what led us to the decisions we have made.  Those should be going out early- to mid-next week, and I am sure that after you have read them both Chris and I will be open to talking with you.  We always have been.  It is, after all, part of our covenant with each other.

There will be opportunities for you to talk with one another, too, beginning after this service when there’ll be gatherings in several locations —  The Parlor, Lower Hall 2, and right here in the sanctuary.  Choose the space that works best for you.  These meetings were designed in a particular way to help facilitate the immediate sharing of feelings, the first asking of questions, and the initial expressing of hopes for the future.  There will be other gatherings, designed in different ways, aimed at serving different needs, in the days and weeks ahead. 

I want to say another word, to be clear about today’s sessions — they are designed to gather questions, not provide the answers.  The Board will take these questions and incorporate them into the FAQ they’re developing that will go out mid-week as part of the materials for the upcoming Congregational Meeting on June 2^nd.  At that meeting the congregation will be asked to support the Separation Agreement the Board and I have negotiated (with the help of staff from the Southern Region of the UUA, and other consulting religious professionals).  Throughout these negotiations we kept asking, “How do we stay in covenant with one another?” and, “What does Justice look like in this situation?”  It took a while, to be honest, yet we finally came to a place we all could agree was fair and in keeping with our values.  I hope you’ll come to that meeting on Sunday, June 2^nd (following the service), and with those two questions in your heart and mind I hope you will vote to ratify this Agreement.

When people have asked me what I planned to say today, or even why I thought I should talk at all this morning, I’ve repeatedly said that I believe times like these need a sermon — times of change, times of a sudden shift in our lives, times of loss.  Even when the loss is anticipated, even welcomed, it still can be so very hard when it comes.  When someone we’ve known and loved is in hospice, for instance, or has been struggling with an illness for a long, long time … we know that our parent’s, partner’s, sibling’s, friend’s, child’s death is coming, maybe even coming soon, yet when it does it is still so very often a shock.  Their death was expected … but not expected that day, or in that moment.

The suddenness of most (actually, maybe all) major life changes catches us off guard.  A pregnancy lasts roughly 9 months, yet after the delivery first-time parents often find themselves feeling as though the whole world just changed in an instant, that moment they first saw or held their child.  Even women who have labored mightily for hours to bring their baby into the world have told me that there’s still a moment after all that when they suddenly feel the reality of now being a parent, as if a switch was flipped.  And they tell me that even with all that preparation they’re still shocked and knocked off their feet a bit by it.

Anyone who’s ever changed a tire knows the experience of pulling, straining with all of your might, trying to loosen a lug nut that seems to have been welded in place.  You know the thing’s going to move at some point, but … until … it … does …  Andthensuddenlyitdoes!  Wham!  I’ve smacked my knuckles more than once when that nut finally let go.

Sudden change can hurt.  It can hit us upside the head, kick us in the gut, knock the wind out of us, or make us weak in the knees.  Sometimes it’s all of the above.  Even when it’s a change we’ve been looking forward to, its sudden arrival can leave us feeling disoriented.  Because change — even welcome change — is hard.  And hard change — change we didn’t expect or want — is even harder.

The change we’re in the midst of here is even more complex to navigate because there are so many moving parts to it — so many people involved, so many different understandings of just what brought us here, so many different responses to it.  Some people see things this way, others see those same things that way, and others aren’t looking at those things at all but are looking at different things altogether. 

And there are so many tempting places to place the blame.  “We wouldn’t be in this situation if only you hadn’t …” or, “… if only you had ...”  It’s human of us to want to find a cause, to identify a reason, to, in short, seek a place to place the blame for the change we wish we weren’t in, and all the cacophony and chaos, all the pain that comes with it.  A week or so ago I heard about a tee shirt that says, “I’m not saying that you’re responsible.  I’m saying that I’m blaming you.”  Right?  I’m seeing more than a few heads nodding.  Of course we get it; it’s so human of us.

It doesn’t do us any good, though.  There’s hardly ever — and I think I’ll go so far as to say that there isn’t ever — one person who is entirely at fault, or even a group of people who are entirely in the wrong.  It’d be nice if life were that clear cut, but it’s not.  It really isn’t.  This is not to say that none of us should be accountable for our actions — people do make mistakes, and people do consciously make decisions and take actions that are … problematic … and cause harm.  I’m not saying that we should always accept every kind of behavior in the name of “getting along.”  I am saying that blaming people is not helpful.  In fact, it can make it harder to hold them accountable. 

Blame is easier, of course.  We get to distance ourselves, create a comfortable buffer of righteousness around ourselves.  Lovingly holding someone accountable, “lovingly calling them back into community” (when that’s possible), is harder and infinitely more uncomfortable because we have to stay engaged, have to bring our own selves right there into the midst, the mess of it, have to acknowledge that there are no angels and no devils.  Not even us.

In the days and weeks, months and years ahead I encourage you to stay engaged, to stay connected.  Don’t write anybody off.  Don’t give up or give in.  This won’t be easy, but living authentically in covenanted community never is. 

There’s one other thing I’d recommend — don’t let this become everything.  This morning had been scheduled as far back as the beginning of the church year to be our annual Music Sunday.  When it became clear that Adam’s email was going out this past Friday there was discussion about whether we needed to postpone Music Sunday to some future Sunday because people would very likely want to and need to focus on … this.  In those discussions the words of a hymn kept echoing in my head.  (It’s #108, “My Life Flows On In Endless Song,” otherwise known as “How Can I Keep From Singing?”)

My life flows on in endless song

Above earth’s lamentation.

I hear the real though far-off hymn

That hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing.

It sounds an echo in my soul.

How can I keep from singing?

What through the tempest ‘round me roars,

I know the truth, it liveth.

What through the darkness ‘round me close,

Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that rock I’m clinging.

Since love prevails in heav’n and earth,

how can I keep from singing?

As a congregation, as a community, a people … as individuals … we have just received news that even if we kind of expected it, even if we wanted it, signals a sudden shift from things as they’ve been to … something else.  And some of us are sad, or confused, or angry; feeling the pain of loss and grief; fearing for the congregation’s future.  (Or all of the above.)  These feelings are real, and we should pay attention to them.  Yet we should not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by them.  Through all this tumult and this strife, though we may feel a tempest ‘round us roaring, let’s not keep from singing.  For, my friends, love does prevail “on heav’n and earth.”  The Love on which, in which, this congregation is grounded is stronger than any disagreement, any discomfort, any struggle, any loss.  That Love calls on us — each of us individually and all of us collectively — to be our best selves, to bravely follow where it leads, and … whatever else we do or don’t do … to keep on singing.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Through All The Cycles and Seasons

This is the text of the sermon I preached at the congregation I serve, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist, on Sunday, September 25, 2016.

Everything 

Turns, 

Rotates, 

Spins, 

Circles, 

Loops, 

Pulsates, 

Resonates, 

And  

Repeats. 

Circles 

Of life, 

Born from 

Pulses 

Of light, 

Vibrate 

To 

Breathe, 

While 

Spiraling 

Outwards 

For 

Infinity 

Through 

The lens 

Of time, 

And into 

A sea 

Of stars 

And 

Lucid 

Dreams. 

That was Suzy Kassem poem, "Circle of Life." 

The Autumnal Equinox was this past Thursday. It's one of the markers of one of those turnings -- the turning of the seasons: spring into summer, summer into fall, fall into winter, and winter into spring again.  The cycle of these seasons has continued, unabated, since the earth tipped 23 1/2 degrees off its central axis about five hundred and seventy million years ago. "Everything turns, rotates, spins, circles, loops, pulsates, resonates, and repeats."   

Most of us are at least slightly tilted off our axis, too.  We, too, go through cycles and seasons.  Ours are not as measured and consistent as the earth's, of course. Roughly speaking, it always takes 24 hours to pass from day through night, and 365 days (give or take) to cycle through the seasons, whereas for us a season might last days, or decades.   

When I was a kid, the singer-songwriter Harry Chapin was telling us that all his life's a circle, and we nodded and sang along: 

All my life's circle / sunrise and sundown/ the moon rolls through the nighttime / till the daybreak comes around.  All my life's a circle / but I can't tell you why. /Seasons spinning round again/ the years keep rollin' by. 

 That sounds kind of right, doesn't it?  Except that it's not. Not exactly. A circle is too neat. Too ordered and orderly. We don't mark the same circuit days after day, year after year -- coming back to the same places we were before, covering the self-same ground to get there.   We live our lives not in ever-repeating circles, but in spiraling cycles. We come back to some of the same places, sure, but coming back to them again we find that they're ever so slightly, and sometimes quite drastically, different because, hopefully, we're different.   Because over the course of our last trip around our own internal sun we've changed.  Grown.  Become someone new.  When Thomas Wolfe said, "You can't go home again," he didn't mean that you couldn't literally, physically return to the place you grew up in, but that if you do you'll find that it's no longer quite the same "home" it was, nor are you the same "you." 

And yet ... 

My brother Paul went to a lecture by the Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield.  At one point Kornfield asked, "Do you ever look in the mirror and, seeing the face that's looking back at you think, 'that's not me'?"  Paul, who had just passed one of those "milestone" birthdays had to say he knew the feeling.  So do I.  Maybe you do too.  "Well," Kornfield continued, "that's because it's not."  Despite all the outer changes that lead our kids and grandkids to look at pictures of us when we were there age and say, "Really?", something stays the same within us.  Something remains unchanging through all of those outer changes ... and all the inner ones, too. 

Those inner changes are what I was thinking about when I said that most of us were slightly titled on our axes.  We may start off spinning straight and smooth, but we don't stay that way for that long.  All throughout our lives we experience things that knock us for a loop, knock us off our feet, knock us off our axis.  Heartaches, failures, illnesses, deaths, the "thousand and one slings and arrows that flesh is heir to."  Yet it's not just the hard stuff, either, that throws us for a loop.  There's a reason people say to "be careful what you wish for."  Those great things, too -- finding that the love of your life loves you, too; aceing that test, that course, that degree; getting the job you'd hoped for; marriage; babies -- all these things tilt our worlds.  And we wobble 'till we find a way to establish some sense of stability in this new position.  We don't, any of us, come round and round again to the same place, at the same time, in the say way.  Spiraling cycles, not static circles -- that's the reality of our lives. 

And yet, through it all, something remains consistent -- something, some one.  There's an "I," a "me," that moves in and through all of those changes.  Even when I look back over my life and see how differently I thought, felt, and behaved in the past, it's still "me" who's noticing the ways I've changed.  This "me" is who is looking out at the face in the mirror, thinking that the image isn't me. 

When French philosopher Rene Descartes wanted to get to the very bottom, the bedrock reality of what is knowable, he peeled away layer after layer of things we think we "know," yet which we really only guess or assume.  I "know" that I'm standing behind this pulpit, speaking to all of you, yet I might actually be lying in my bed, and you all might be characters in a dream.  There's no way, really, to know for sure.  Piece by piece Descartes took apart the edifice of our certainty.  Yet just before he came to the conclusion that there was nothing we could actually claim to know, no reality that we could count on as more than a mere perception, he realized that someone was thinking all these things.  He couldn't know for sure what he looked like, how old he was, where he lived, who he loved, but it was self evident that someone was thinking, and that, whatever else might or might not be true of him, he could know for certain that he was, as he put it, "a thinking thing."  Cogito ergo sum.  I think, therefore I am. 

Many, maybe even most of us probably don't feel comfortable with such a reductionist idea that our essential existence is as "thinking things."  Yet the idea that there is an "essential existence," a "core reality," an "I," a "me," that moves through this life I know as mine -- that probably seems to us self evident.  Yet what is that thing?  Who is, what is, that "I," that "me" who's asking these things?  Who is, what is, that "I" who's listening and thinking your own thoughts about all of this? 

These are important questions, because when our axes are titled in ways we're not yet used to or prepared for, we need to know where to go to find our center.  When we're buffeted about by the winds of change, we need to know what we can hang on to.  For some of us, of course, the answer would be "God," yet that's really not much of an answer because "God" is just a word, a poetic shorthand, and using it doesn't really tell us all that much about whatever it is we think we're referring to when we use it.  So the question of what, precisely, is our center, our anchor, our grounding point remains an open one. 

A few days ago I noticed a full-page ad in Entertainment Weekly for a book called The Forgetting, by Sharon Cameron.  The ad was nothing more than an image of the book's cover, and the words, "What isn't written, isn't remembered.  Even your crimes."  Who wouldn't be intrigued?  It's the story of a young woman named Nadia, who lives in the city of Canaan, where every twelve years every person completely loses every one of their memories. All of them.  After "the forgetting," as its called, people don't know their names, don't recognize their families, can't remember a single thing from the moment of waking up.  So everyone has a book with them at all times, and everyone dutifully writes down everything about their lives, so that when they awake from the forgetting they can remind themselves of what they've forgotten. And over and again they are reminded of these words from what's called "the First Book of the Forgetting:" 

"At the first sun rising of the twelfth year, they will forget.  They will lose their memories, and without their memories, they are lost.  Their books will be their memories, their written past selves.  They will write in their books.  They will keep their books.  They will write the truth, and the books will tell them who they have been.  If a book is lost, then so are they Lost.  I am made of my memories.  Without memories, they are nothing." 

 Can you imagine?  No memories of who you are that are older than 12 years ago?  You may know, the way we know facts from a text book, that this person is your spouse, and these people are your parents, and this stranger you're looking at is your best friend, but you don't actually remember them, not directly, not for more than the past twelve years.  

Some of us come uncomfortably, painfully close.  Anyone who's had any association with Alzheimers or other forms of dementia know well what it's like for someone to lose their memories of who they've been and become "lost."  Yet the situation in Canaan is different, I think, because during those twelve years you are completely lucid, living your life forming new vivid and vibrant memories ... which you know you will forget in no more than twelve years.  The people of Canaan live stuck in a repeating cycle, and are aware of both the reality of their situation and the limits that confine them. 

For the people of Canaan, they live just as you and I do, but they have no "I"  that has traveled with them throughout their lives, no touchstone for when the axis gets tilted. There's nothing to hold on to.  Except, their book. 

Everyone carries their book with them at all times -- tied to them, in fact.  They know that their books are, in that great phrase, "their written past selves" and that "the books will tell them who they have been."  Even in this strange world, people need that.  Need something consistent amidst all the inevitable challenges and changes of life.  Need a sense of identity that can tell them who they've been, who they are, and who they might be.  For the people of Canaan, who have no connection with their past, their books provide them with a "written past self" that helps them navigate the present and points them toward a future. 

What is that identity for you?  What is it that you hold on to when your feet are swept out from under you?  Who is the "you" who looks out at the face the the mirror? 

What gives the plot of The Forgetting its push is Nadia, because she, for some reason, didn't forget during the forgetting.  She remembers.  And remembering, she wants to understand why things are the way they are, and how -- if -- they could be made right.  While the book is written for ages 12 and up, I have to say that I had a hard time putting it down, and really wish it hadn't come to an end.  The plot twists felt completely real, and were completely unexpected.  It was, as my mom hated to hear people say, "a good read." 

What would be in your book?  Who is the "you" you come back to, the "you" who is you, the "you" you can count on when you can't count on anything else.  What, for you, precedes "ergo sum" -- you ... what ... therefore you are?  Our Unitarian Universalist faith doesn't give us the answers to these questions.  It does tell us that they're important to ask. 

There is a danger in what we've been thinking about this morning, that I feel I have to address.   We can get too attached to our anchors, hold too tightly to those things that ground us, limit ourselves by being too bound by what we've been.  It is all too easy to say "this got me through the last axial tilt, so I'd better not let of of it.  Even a little."  We can become almost superstitious about it, like the athlete who insists on wearing the same socks to every game because he was wearing them that time they won.  We can use this sense of "who I've been, and who I am" to fix ourselves in place.  Yet are not meant to be fixed in place.  We are meant to be in orbit -- moving, turning, rotating, spinning, circling, looping, pulsating, resonating, and, yes, repeating, yet never quite exactly in the same way. 

The author of The Forgetting address all of this too, having her heroine write in her book near the end, 

"We are made of memories.  I've read those words every day of my life.  Today I decided that they're true.  We are who we have been.  But it's my choice today that is the memory of tomorrow. It's my choice that determines what I will become.  Not the memories of the past." 

We live our lives not in ever-repeating circles, but in spiraling cycles. We come back to same of the same places, to be sure, but coming back to them again we find that they're ever so slightly, and sometimes quite drastically, different because, hopefully, we're different.   Because over the course of our last trip around our own internal sun we've changed.  Grown.  Become someone new. 

May it be so for us all. 

Pax tecum,

RevWik

***** 

Preachers all know the experience of having to cut a passage (and sometimes more than just one passage) from their sermons.  Sometimes the whole thing is too long.  Sometimes this passage isn't entirely on point.  Often it's one of the passages we really love.  (The sacrifices we make for the congregations we serve!)  Here's one from this past Sunday's sermon:

In 1765 the French literary critic Antoine Leonard Thomas wrote an essay in praise of Decartes and wrote a slightly expanded version of all of this.  It should probably be emblazoned on the walls of Unitarian Universalist churches everywhere. You see, Descartes had not been merely thinking when he had his epiphany.  Specifically, he was in the process of doubting -- doubting everything.  And when he got to the point of doubting his own existence, he realized that the act of doubting required a Doubter and that, in this case, he was the Doubter.  Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum -- I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.