There’s been a lot of depression going around lately. I, myself have been depressed for the last four days. This is a triumph—in years past it might have been four months before the fog was lifted–and yet today already I can feel that grey veil peeling back to reveal a world in full color. I mentioned my depression to a friend who said that it was happening to everyone she knows— not usual for early May—and she suggested that the earthquake and the cyclone and the continuing war are creating a collective weight that is pressing down on all of us, too much death and destruction for our mere humanness to bear.

She could be right. Spring may have arrived, but there are so many people struggling for the threads of their lives that we can’t help but be affected; we can’t help but be pushed. We are not living in isolation, and while we never have, technology brings the crises closer than ever. From here there is so little we can do—and it calls up memories of other similar times: Columbine and the tsunami and riots and cults and we are stuck in our comfortable lives wondering when the weight of the guilt will paralyze us for good. It’s not a hard leap from there to feeling helpless and from there we slide easily to hopeless and from there it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump—or a slump—to depression. When we add our own personal losses to the mix this puzzle of depression’s surge is no longer a puzzle. The puzzle then is, what are we going to do about it? See the trick to depression is that it’s not a thing to be fought, because it feeds on negative energy. It’s not a thing to be pushed back against. It’s a condition to be managed, to be worked around, to be slyly evaded. Brute force rarely works; what works is a clever and persistent underground resistance.

Some of that resistance is medical—rearranging the chemistry that causes the slump either by medication or by conversation. Some of that resistance is routine—making easiest the things that are best for us. Some of that resistance is educational—when we shine a light on depression it shrinks a bit. And some of that resistance is social—using the power of community to keep us in good health.

Community has power. It has tremendous power. People who don’t have any idea why else they come to church come to church to be in community, because there’s something about it that we can’t get by ourselves. Even when we don’t understand it we want it—in fact, we crave it. Humans are built to be social animals and we respond to the presence of others. When we come to church we come bringing ourselves, bringing the gift of whoever we are, however we are. Whether we think we need it or not, someone needs it—someone needs us— perhaps to hug, perhaps to reject, perhaps to reflect, perhaps to educate, perhaps to soothe. When we come here we come here as 101 people bearing 101 gifts, and we give those gifts to each other.

And nothing helps us feel unpinched like giving it away.

If we believe in abundance; if we believe in strength and hope and joy; if we are having a hard day and believe in nothing; if we are fearful; if we are inspired—what we bring to the community makes the community. We are the community. And when we feel the depression grasping our hearts we still have something to bring. Even weeds flower. Even the weeds in our own yards flower. We always have something. And the community, the transforming power of community, means that we will find a way to use it—but for that transformation to occur, we must be willing to let go.

One of the hardest things for institutions is being given large financial gifts with long lists of restrictions. Organizations have been disbanded while holding major gifts that were entirely unusable, like a huge organ endowment for a church that is desperate to fix its foundation. What good is an organ if the roof leaks and the pews are sinking through the floors? The institution can best use what is given if it is freely given. Other gifts have the same story. If you bring us your energy, your commitment, your passion; if you bring us your despair, your fear, your anger—you must let it go. You must give it up. You must give it to the community freely. You must be willing to be transformed here, or you will spend all your time with us in fear. When Capek created the flower communion he was looking for a ritual that was really, truly, exclusively ours, not rooted or borrowed elsewhere. What he made was a ceremony celebrating community, and the beauty that we bring when we are all here. We have that beauty available to us every day, all the time. What ritual does–what this ritual does—is make present and visible what is already true. It does not create or destroy; it does not alter reality; what it does is alter the truths of our hearts by showing us more clearly what is around us. We carry some fear about having that kind of spiritual heart surgery—we have, most of us, learned to trust our hearts the way they are. Opening them up and letting them be transformed by forces outside of our control is like suggesting that magnetic north needs to be adjusted. It invites profound change.

But by regular adjustments we can avoid the wild swinging of the needle that dramatically alters landscapes and ecologies and starts the whole world over. We can take it in increments and adjust as we go. Thus annual and monthly and daily ritual. And we have to trust it—thus ritual with theological underpinnings—ritual with reason, not against or despite it. This is who we are. This is who we have made ourselves to be.

These flowers are symbols; they represent something of you, something that you have chosen to bring here, to us. They are more than themselves when we gather them here—they share color and beauty with each other—and when you take one, you are changed. It is no different from other Sundays, but the flower reminds you.

By giving we are reminded what in ourselves is wonderful and worthy to be given; we are reminded what our gifts are, what our abundances are. We are reminded what we have that is valuable to others which may remind us what is of value to ourselves. How do we know—how do we really see what flowers are growing in our yards until it’s mid- may and flower communion is upon us, and our flower beds are not yet blooming? It is only then that we see the dandelions, the forsythias, the wild violets, the grape hyacinths. It is only then that we see the apple blossoms and consider all the possibilities. There is so much richness, so much beauty all around us; it is faith, religious practice, and community-need that help us see what is already here and make deliberate choices about how best to use our resources.

we’re made to be generous.

we want to be gods like Prometheus with the best gift ever to give the world. We want to have our own needs satisfied so we can look to the needs of others. [We like to watch Oprah and Extreme Makeover Home Edition because, to the extent that money can make people happy; to the extent that things can make people happy, they and shows like them devote some of their considerable resources to giving people what they need and we all have a fantasy about doing that, about being able to make things happen, good things.] Generosity is hardwired into our brains and soaked into our bones, because without giving, without sharing, we would not survive.

We are humans, with big brains, no fur, no claws, nothing built in. What we have is intelligence…and the ability to function in social groups—the ability to cooperate. Generosity, giving, sharing what we know and what we have is a product of thousands of years of evolution. If you don’t share and aren’t shared-with, you die. You’re gone from the gene pool. All these generations later we’re designed to give. We’re made to give. it’s who we are. And we give even at the expense of our own best interests. That’s what Prometheus suffered for, chained to a rock and cursed with the power of regeneration; doomed to be picked to death but never to die. He gave us fire that we might become who we are, but we know that generosity is not always easy; giving is not always free. Sometimes we risk being chained to a rock and having our livers pecked out, if we know that the world will benefit from our sacrifice. It’s a striking story, the opposite of Stone Soup and just as odd. Most of us are neither that profoundly generous nor that profoundly stingy most of the time. We live our lives in the middle ground, between clutching fear and bleeding hearts. We want to make things work; we want to bring life into the world and help people out, but we want to do it easily, with as little personal disruption as possible. That’s why it works to give to charities from unexpected bonuses and tax returns—if you weren’t planning on having the money anyway, then it won’t hurt you to give it away.

But that doesn’t really satisfy the need to make meaningful our participation in community. We make our presence meaningful by doing things that do disturb our daily routines—by giving time that we need for other things; by giving money that we would otherwise know just how to spend. We don’t need to sacrifice our livers to the vultures, but we do need to feel the giving as a part of our lives.

Once upon a time in this country, each person had one community, and only one. You were born, lived, and died there.

Things have changed, of course. Now we have charities around the world and right here at home; we have causes, we have schools that are nowhere near our homes and that are not populated by members of our congregation, and striking a balance is a major feat, not a casual given. Today we gave so that people on the other side of the world might have shelter and food and medical care in the wake of a natural disaster. In the coming months we may choose civil rights or Loaves and Fishes Pantry or the Emmaus Shelter or better sidewalks in Ellsworth or a partner church in India as places where we want to put our time and energy and joy and conviction…and faith. Because these are acts of faith. Giving and generosity are acts of faith. As a religious congregation we have received so many generous acts of faith this year. We have received a year of volunteer leadership in our children’s religious education program; we have received thousands and thousands of dollars for our new kitchen; we have received countless hours of coffeemaking and greeting and program and newsletter folding and typing and drawing and cooking and discussing. We have a new bell to ring in honor of our sacred times; we have a new roof, funded by a number of generous gifts over the years, to keep the rain and snow out and the heat in; we have had not one but two thrilling celebrations: one of ordination, one of installation; we have been gifted with preaching and music and worship services from people who are giving them from the goodness of their hearts, because they believe in us…and because they believe in themselves.

Such generosity is in our marrow and hearts and guts. And yet we fight it. And yet. And yet it’s hard when you’re hungry to give up what little you have—the handful of potatoes or the bit of broth. It’s hard when you believe yourself poor to give away money, even a little of it.

It’s hard to set aside time for your spirit in a life that demands more than 24 hours for the business of your day. It’s hard to be generous with anything when we’re feeling pinched. But the fact is, nothing helps us feel unpinched like giving it away. Nothing helps us know our own limits like stretching toward them. Nothing helps us take care of ourselves like doing the work to which our hearts call us. And that work, that stretching, that giving can grow what we have and who we are to feed not just us, but an entire community or an entire world.

Barbara Kingsolver wrote an essay in 1995 called Stone Soup, in praise of so-called “alternative” family arrangements . She points out, of course, that the isolated, nuclear family of which some leaders are so fond has its unlikely and recent provenance in the post WWII era and a need to find jobs for returning soldiers. But she speaks one critical truth: not only is that family structure new, it is relatively unstable because it is so small. An extended or forged family of one kind or another is much more likely to get through hard times, to support its children, and to flex rather than crack under the pressures of our lives.

Now a church is not a family—we are bigger than a family, we are not as intimate as a family, we are more specific and more flexible than a family—which is as it should be. We don’t all love each other the way we love our children and our partners and our dear friends. We have events and services which welcome those who need a community of spirit and heart and thought like this one. We try much harder to let people in. Churches that say they are “close-knit families” are usually in decline , because their doors are too closed; their identities too fixed. And yet there are things we, and all healthy churches, have in common with family—when we are growing, when we are expanded and extended, we have more wisdom and more possibility. We are more flexible, more resilient. We are better able to bend; we are less likely to break. When individual presence is important as a small part of a whole, rather than as one of three table legs, we are more stable. We are stronger. And we can do more for ourselves and for everyone else. We have more gifts, which means we can give more gifts. We have acres of flowers.

And why, after all, are we here? Do we exist merely to serve ourselves? Is this path to spiritual enlightenment a self-serving space for a self-serving journey? Or in the process of our development do we find, like so many others, that spiritual growth, that personal deepening, that community widening calls for reaching out as well as reaching in? Does our presence here indicate an interest in something larger than ourselves?

It does. The existence of religion, that the presence of spiritual community in this struggling and busy world is the best possible indication that no matter how bad things get—indeed, the worse they get—the more we need these larger connections. We come here to connect, and we come here to share. We come here to give.

We are wired for giving. It is planted deep within us. This is our place. This is our time. Let us celebrate always the gifts we give and the gifts we receive. And let us honor the glory around us.

Once upon a time there was a family of three bears

Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in the woods with her grandmother

Once upon a time there was a poor woodcutter

Once upon a time there were three sisters

Once upon a time there was a poor traveler

Once upon a time there was a gentle and sympathetic god–

The story of giving and the story of gifts, the story of the flower communion and the story of our faith are the story of fairy tales, of dreaming, of the telling of stories themselves, spinning yarns out of nowhere to make something of nothing. It is the story of creativity and the very story of creation which rests in our hands.

We all want to be like gods. We want to create, and we want to give.

May it be so.

Blessed be

and amen.

Sometimes
everything happens at once.
Sometimes births and deaths
beginnings and endings
get entangled on their paths
and arrive at once
anxious and busy and full–
or perhaps it is we
who are anxious and busy and full–
and we watch it happen
and we know it will happen
but no matter what we do
the moment of impact is still stunning
because force is force.

That’s just the way it is.
We are here in the impact point
with Beltane and an installation
and Frank Pollien’s death
and Irving Forbes’ death
balanced on the one head
of the one pin
that is this moment
that is this day.
We may be a little emotional
we may be a little unstable
we may be a little upset
we may be a little overwhelmed.
…or a lot.
We may be our everything
with a little more intensity
as our own heartbeats rise
to match the pace of the day we’ve stepped into.
Emotional overwhelm is normal
and important
and interesting
–unless it’s your own.
Emotional overwhelm is frightening
emotional overwhelm is intense.
Emotional overwhelm cracks us wide open
so then we can be transformed.
We may not be ready
we might not have chosen change
but there it is
waiting on the doorstep
and it
will wait
until
we come out.
It can wait a very.
Long.
Time.
We know this. Deep in our bones we can feel the change coming like a steamroller or a freight train and we hope and we pray that it doesn’t come today, not now, not please, not like this
–take this cup away–
but it comes
it comes anyway.
And caught in the teeth of the life that we have
and the life that we have grown to love
what can we do?
What can we possibly, possibly do?
Except breathe
breathe deep.
And decide where the energy leads us.
There’s only so much we can see.
There’s only so much we can know.
There’s only so much we can possibly understand.
And when the basket is heaped full it helps to know
what for us is wheat
and what is chaff;
what will blow away in the wind
and what will fall back
to the threshing-room floor
to feed us
to nourish us
to move us eventually
from this day forward.

My Indian grandmother began sifting through her life before I really got to know her. Her days and nights followed the same practical pattern, worn into the floor of her Mumbai apartment by her soft slippers over years of practice. Her clothes were basic, her life was basic, but she was happy. She was content. It was enough. I remember it clearly because it’s hard for us to embrace “enough”.

Abundance and lack do their peculiar tango, but balance, sufficiency, limit, escape us. They escape us even when we should know them so well, as well as we know our own five fingers and toes, as well as we know the face and skin of our lovers and the footfall of our dear ones. They escape us even as we cry out for them, even as we find impossibilities in the dark with our shins and sing for some sweet relief, even as we pile our lives to the brim and then gaze in wonder and dismay as the stack un-forms and slips once more into chaos and we know we need rest.

These are, after all, the major forces of our lives, of all life, chaos and rest.

The whole world tends toward chaos and rest. That’s what the scientists say. Order takes energy to maintain. Chaos is easier. Resting is easier.

And whatever is easier is where we humans start. We are built for efficiency. Long, complex series of thoughts about eventual consequences are not our thing. Just ask any high schooler. Sure, we can. But we don’t wanna.

And at first we don’t. As children we tend to be wiggly creatures, soft and curious and endlessly caught in a state of wonder. If something is interesting, we investigate. If something is appealing, we go to it, taste it, touch it; if something isn’t working for us we reject it. We don’t worry that Great Aunt Bessie gave us that scratchy sweater that she made with her own hands. We don’t worry that dad spent hours making that pizza with the icky mushrooms on it. We know what we like; we know what we don’t like; we act accordingly. Following our impulses works.

As we get older we discover, much to our dismay, that there are other considerations. We adjust accordingly. What is easiest becomes a compromise forged between our impulses and what we think we know the world wants. That’s a lot of work, figuring out what everyone else wants so we can accommodate it. It certainly keeps us engaged and busy and involved, and for a while that seems important. We set aside impulse so we can grow into adulthood, get a job, have kids, get a permanent address, go back to church. In this stage we often focus on our careers and families and everything else that requires intense and continuous social engagement. The secret to our happiness becomes connected to the secrets of everyone else’s happiness. It’s a big world out there, but the rewards are fabulous, the connections are rich and rewarding. We feel like there’s a place in the world where we fit and where we belong. We feel like there are people we know and systems we are finally familiar with. We have a Spot, and life is pretty good.

And then somewhere in adulthood, many of us look around and notice something. We have all the stuff. We have the accessories, the accompaniments, the gadgets, the dishes, the furniture, everything we thought we were working so hard for. We have the people: we have families and friends and colleagues and bowling leagues. We’ve had the experiences: traveled places and seen things and tried jobs and cooked exotic foods and repaired sinks. We’ve checked it off—the whole list. And now what?

Now what?

The world suddenly seems unaccountably quiet, the air still. The persistent hum of the to-do list fades away with the last child’s departure into adulthood or the first friend’s death, and the question hangs there, bouncing slowly. Now what?

There are ways in which our lives are very simple—we need food, we need energy, we need passion…and we need growth. If we are not growing we are shrinking; if we are not eating we are wasting away. We have spent a lifetime amassing the pieces of our lives. And at this turning point, whenever it arrives, we realize slowly that we will be perfectly happy to stop–someday. Unlike institutions, we have a short and visible life cycle, and if we live long enough we all eventually decide that the closets are full. We are not inclined to seek out new things, new experiences, new friends. We have enough, we’ve seen enough, it’s enough. And enough is enough—we don’t need more. It will just end up in the woodshed or stuffed in the closets behind the kneewalls.

And really, who wants a new friend stuffed in the closet behind the kneewall because we already have too many?

So we start reducing. We start backing off. We start stripping away. And the more we take off, the more we simplify, the more we reduce, the more uncomplicated we try to make things. It’s hard to overcome the inertia of so many years of accumulation, but once we get started it snowballs.

In India they have a whole system for understanding it. There is an expectation that the last stage of life is asceticism—a stripped-down version of all the other living we’ve done. There is an understanding that it is spiritually rich to give up certain foods, to simplify one’s dress, to spend more time in prayer. No one expects this of young people. It’s a life change that comes naturally with age, so that it is not at all unusual for elders to sit quite still in prayer for long times each day, to eat the same foods for each meal, to have several sets of identical clothes.

But in our fast-paced world this stripping down doesn’t have to come from age. In fact, the faster we live the more we cram in. We live longer but we get full at the same rate and at some point we need a break. If we don’t take one on our own, we get tired. And the more tired we are, the more streamlined we make our lives.

We stop doing lots of extra things, we stop traveling much, we stop maintaining vast and complex social networks. We also figure out how to take off our clothes near the washing machine, put away the dishes in the dish drainer, and make at most one trip to the grocery store a week. We don’t necessarily call it simplicity, although the voluntary simplicity movement is popular for a reason. We probably make excuses and act guilty; we probably blame it on our schedule or on our health. But there’s truth that runs deeper. We don’t have time for all this. We need more focus, but we also need to do less. We have a focus-diffusion habit. Focus is scary, because some things are too big and too hard to manage head-on. When the emotion is larger than human capacity, we want to redirect. Henry Nelson Wieman says that art gives us a side door, allowing us oblique access to the massive impact of major events—births and deaths, major triumphs and tragedies—without getting paralyzed. (Source of Human Good p. 156) It’s true, a good work of fiction or theater can let people experience just enough grief or joy to cause transformation without being mired by the power of the reality. But art is not the only softener. If we reduce the number of things we’re managing and simplify the management itself then we reduce the total stressload on our lives and are more equipped to deal with what remains. There’s no shame in knowing limits and there’s no shame in acting on that knowledge. Even if it results in what some people call being lazy.

There is a place where simplicity meets efficiency, where the most direct route is also the shortest and fastest (although not when you’re driving in Maine), where what makes sense makes sense all the way around. It’s not efficiency at the expense of health; it’s not over-mechanization. It’s the moment when everything falls into place and we’re working in harmony with the rhythms of our environment and our own soft and precious bodies. And we come back to our instincts. We come back to our impulses. Age brings that more surely than anything else. Not getting older, but being older—being old enough to have soaked up a lot of life’s beauty and pain, being old enough to have seen a lot and survived it, being old enough to have a little poise and a little grace in the face of powerful obstacles…and being old enough to choose whether to use that poise and that grace for others’ comfort or for one’s own. When we are truly elders we might even do both at once, but the path of least resistance is often the path of most truth, and anytime we speak truth we are bound to make someone uncomfortable. What’s important is that the discomfort is a deliberate choice—that we have selected it because it is important or because it carries a message or because it forges a deeper connection or a better world. Discomfort is only useful when it is a means to an end.

And when it is, it can be our brightest beacon.

Our infants and our pets can educate us. Their unease is what says that they need something—touch, solitude, a diaper change, a walk, a hug—and their first impulse is to get that need met. We are powerfully trained from childhood to override our impulses, to subdue our needs, to set aside our truths. The skills are useful, but they are limited. Eventually–no matter what you do–the bathroom calls more loudly than anything, and it must be answered. The cycles shorten and remind us what is truly important, what cannot be ignored: our bodies. Our spirits. Our self-knowledge. Our intuition. Our wonder.

When my Dadi set aside fancy food and fancy clothing in her 80th year she was not doing it for deprivation, she was doing it for simplicity and for depth, for the things that continued to matter. As her flesh and bones continue to force her to choose, she chooses what she loves, what she needs, what fills her spirit, what strengthens her mind. Anything left is left behind. By now it seems she must be floating a bit, skimming above the dust of the Mumbai streets in the dusk which frames her daily shopping. My mother’s parents were the same, eating dry toast without butter and having simple conversations at the dining table that now graces my kitchen. They were done with life not fast but slowly, with a measured grace that they strung out as long as they could. Our elders have this to teach: that what is important does not come from far away. In fact, most times it comes from within our towns, within our walls, within ourselves. What is important is that which we want to do despite the laziness, or because of it. What is important is what we know makes our hearts sing.

For Irving Forbes and Frank Pollien it was music and family and community and hard work and a hundred things we may never know.

For each of us we are still learning, still finding, still listening, still telling the stories and still growing. May we embrace the gifts of community; may we embrace the gifts of connection; may we, in the company of others, become exquisitely lazy, and thus exquisitely ourselves.

Blessed be,

and amen.

There is a cliff in Matheran, a hill station outside of Mumbai, in India. At the edge you can look straight down, not even a railing between earth and sky. Some people stay back; some walk right up until the staining red clay crumbles beneath their sandals. All they see are tops of trees and clouds sunk low in the valley and dust under their toes. About half of the people on any given day look like they’re going to vomit; the other half look like they are about to fly. They are twins, the seduction and the fear, the gift and the crisis of height.

In physics, height is stored energy, a wealth of something coming. In combination with gravity and mass, height offers the possibility of doing something.

Just by location, just by being where it is, a thing can have potential. It doesn’t need to be moving, it doesn’t need to be strong, it doesn’t even need to be heavy (although it helps). The trick is that in order to release the potential, the object must fall. It must give up its location, give up its possibility, and commit to a swan dive into whatever lies beneath it.

For mountain climbers such a dive could be fatal. For an eagle fledgling, it’s the beginning of freedom. For churches…it all depends on the particular leap of faith.

There are some things we know:

if we do nothing, we will die and with us will go our potential.

if we leap, we may die—or we may not.

**

It’s vacation season. In much of this country vacation means sand and beach balls and swim suits and so forth. In many other places vacation means tents and wool socks and insect repellant and flashlights. In most cases it means a lot of stuff. In many cases the stuff goes in the car.

Packing the car is always a delicate task, a fine art of balance and spatial relations. And in my world it is always delegated to one person, with one vision. The fact is, more than one person just makes the job too long, too complicated, and no better than if one person manages it. Even two talented people are generally no better than one, and any untalented people involved in the process makes it four times longer. The goal is, of course, to have enough room in the back seat for the smallest passengers while keeping all the stuff clean and dry and all the road food accessible.

I’ve noticed these cars arriving here already. Everyone knows what they look like, with no rear visibility and dirty sneakers shoved up against one back window. And every single time the car stops stuff comes out, gets rearranged, and has to be put back. By the same person. With the same vision.

It’s a kind of delegation we all should be familiar with, but somehow in church we choose other methods a lot—methods that involve three or four voices and double or triple the packing time. I don’t think it’s because we are afraid of the journey, although that may play a role. I think it’s because we are trapped in Gil Rendle’s version of management.

Gil Rendle is a consultant for the Alban Institute, an organization that does a lot of church advising and evaluation. In their 34 year history, they have done an incredible number of surveys and studies with congregations to try and figure out why and how we do what we do, what works, and what doesn’t. In his keynotes at UU University last year he spoke about the difference he sees between management and leadership. He suggests that we often ask for leadership. We want to be shown new ways to do things; we want to find structures that support our dreams; we want to become the church we all know we can be. On a smaller scale, that’s what brings us to church in the first place—we want to be the people we know we can be, and we suppose the church can help us work on that. As churches we say we want similar things, and we ask our leaders to lead us into those processes.

Then we get into the process. We discover that the process is not what we expected. We discover that our friends are uncomfortable with the new structures; we discover that we are uncomfortable with the new structures. We discover that there are people leaving; we discover that there are people arriving. We discover, in short, that the process is going to change the church, and that if we stay it will change us. That makes us uneasy.

So we go into what Rendle calls management mode. We start trying to make sure that we are doing things right, and we define right by “comforting and easy”. So we look for ways to soothe the people who are upset and stop the boat from rocking. We look for management—to keep us doing things right—instead of leadership: guidance about doing right things. Leadership helps the crew get moving; management gets it anchored.

An anchored boat is really hard to move.

And while it may keep us from sinking, a boat is a vessel, meant to get somewhere. This is not to say that this model of management has no place. Without some measure of comfort and stability no institution can survive. There are times that the crew needs to sleep; there are storms that need to be waited out in relative safety. But there must be a balance, a rhythm, a swing between stillness and transformation. We need the anchor, but we also need the travel. We need the outreach. We need the possibility. We need the potential released…even if it means freefall into the unknown.

**

Greg Mortenson is a mountain climber. On his way down K2 he took a wrong turn, ended up in the wrong Pakistani village, and launched a career. Now he does very different but equally extraordinary work. In Three Cups of Tea he describes his journey from impulsive promise to one-man peace ambassador, building schools all over the remote corners of Pakistan. One village at a time, he’s giving them schools—infrastructure that makes cultural transformation possible.

–and he’s doing it alone.

Just reading his website is exhausting. The donations page boils down to this: thanks for visiting. If you want to give money, great. But Mortenson works alone, so don’t bother offering time, energy, or supplies. The balance is delicate, and we can’t afford any mistakes.

Some people are made for that kind of life, and we need them out there, making things happen by sheer force of will and charisma. It’s efficient. it’s fast. And it’s effective. But it’s a tough structure to get our heads around in this country of the people by the people for the people. What if they are the wrong people or the wrong decisions?

I hold that it rarely matters.

**

Many years ago I felt differently. I agonized over everything. The color of notebook for a particular class could tie me up for days; the menu choices at a restaurant were paralyzing. No matter what I did I was afraid that I was doing it wrong, and I was so afraid that I often did nothing instead.

Then one day I had an epiphany. I was spending the day with an equally indecisive friend, and we spent the entire day trying figure out how we should spend our time. Something finally

snapped and one of us pulled out a quarter, assigned one choice to each side, and flipped. We did that thing and it was fine. It was definitely better than the first several hours that we spent figuring out what to do. So now I say that there are five important decisions you will make in your life, and there is no way of really knowing what those are. Everything else can be effectively and adequately decided by a coin toss.

Most of us don’t choose most things that way. We choose based on past experience or future hope; we choose based on advice from friends or instinct or life circumstance. So when we turn a decision over to someone else, they will probably choose just fine. And in five years that will be the way it always has been. We can live in the past, or in a world of unchosen roads—or we can live in the present and the future, with the way things are and the way they might next be. If we choose to live forward, and we choose to live in trust, then we can share the weight of leadership much more easily.

For example: the board has been making decisions about how to resolve the leaks in the roof. There’s a good chance most of you care passionately about fixing the leaks. There’s an equally good chance than almost none of you have a specific opinion about the fasteners used to secure whatever new roofing is put in place. They should work. They should last. If they do that, it’s unlikely that any of you want a congregational meeting about roof fasteners. Mortenson is effective because he works alone. He is inspiring because he is effective. He does good work.

Imagine what he could do here—what if he showed up and offered to run an outreach project building churches for congregations in India?

We’d probably start with a committee. Then there would be a congregational meeting to decide which town should get the first church. He would be bound by the vote of the congregation, naturally. And then we’d have a long fundraising drive, because we couldn’t let him start until he had enough money for the whole project. If there were private donors with deep pockets we would only accept their money if they promised not to want special recognition. He would be compelled to adhere to LEED green building standards and there would be a second committee to oversee the architectural design.

I imagine he’d be disgusted and gone within six months.

What keeps him going—what keeps most people inspired and engaged in volunteer work—is results. Good results Big results. Work without results has high burnout and high turnover. Habitat for Humanity is a popular volunteer project with lots of repeaters because at the end you have a house. If you’re a crafter or an artist of any kind you know that moment when it’s done, when you step back and it is no longer a part of you , no longer attached by an umbilical cord but a thing on its own terms, a poem or painting or sweater or table complete. it’s project-ness has been left behind and replaced by an independent existence that may or may not include you. There is such pride in that, and such relief and such joy. It is done.

When we all participate in every decision we deny our volunteers that satisfaction because the results are so hard to come by. They work hard only to have their work refigured by an uninformed group that ostensibly delegated the work to them in the first place. It is disheartening. It is unkind. It is mistrustful. It is undisciplined. Sometimes we all need to have our say…but often we don’t.

And there is spiritual learning here. There is spiritual discipline in being a follower—a good follower, a faithful and dedicated follower. We choose our leaders carefully and then in most cases it is appropriate to follow them. Not the same person all the time, and not without careful thought, but well-executed, following is a path to spiritual growth. It’s also a path to relaxation.

We spend an awful lot of our lives in stress about things we can’t or don’t need to control. It’s okay to let it go. That’s part of being in a group. Even the wild geese take turns in the lead, and when they follow, they just flap along behind.

This following thing is a hard lesson for UU’s, born out of New England’s town meetings. We are accustomed to a system in which everyone always has a say. Like all humans we are afraid of being invisible. Being heard by the group helps us know we exist.

But we are also practical stock. We pride ourselves on doing what makes sense, and sometimes it makes sense to let our being be confirmed by faith and let a small, dedicated group—or individual—make a decision. Sometimes the power lies in ceding our right to speak, that the group’s will might become action, and in so acting we might all live our faith.

Often we are more effective together. Often we are more true to ourselves together. This is why we join with each other, why we trust each other, why we commit, why we covenant. This is why we are a congregation of questioning, questing believers and not just congregations of one. When we welcome new people into our midst, we do so understanding that every one of us is a prophet and that outside eyes are not clouded with the dust from our floors. We do so understanding that we are touched by every life and every face who comes to us, and that we will touch each other. And we do so knowing that who we are is the result of our continuing commitment to the questions, to the processes, and to the answers, rising again and again from our hearts. May we guide each other into an ever renewing future.

Blessed be

and amen.

Becoming A Beacon

April 13, 2008 Ellsworth, ME

in my mind’s eye the image is fuzzy, like failing TV screens and old newspaper photographs–the kind where every dot is black or white and your brain has to fill in the blanks.  There’s never any audio in my memory, never any ambient noise or even-handed newscaster commentary, or any explanation at all, which may be because there was nothing anyone could say.  The picture is almost too small to be believed, always shot from behind the lone figure, always shot toward the advancing tank.  There are things that we always remember; every generation has a few.  That anonymous man in Tian’anman Square made indelible once again what is embedded in the history of the world: sometimes it is worth facing death for what we believe in.

Because Tian’anman Square is in China, because it was 1989, because the Chinese government has been less than forthcoming with details, no one has positively identified the person who faced down the column of tanks on the streets of Beijing.  There have been no follow-up interviews, no analysis of prison terms, no celebration and no grief.  In large measure it has ceased to matter.  What matters is that he was there on that day, that he was photographed, that the world saw him.  On that day he became both more and less than himself.  On that day he became a leader.

He may have been a leader before—he may have organized students or run a newspaper; he may have set fashion trends among the jet set or told compelling stories to captive audiences.  But his leadership was limited–to those times and places, to those people, to his narrow circle so like the narrow circles in which we all live.  As long as one is leading in small and quiet places, one’s leadership remains highly integrated with one’s personhood.  The people who love and follow and criticize and resist are all the same, and the affection and resistance are mutual.  The followers know the leader, faults and foibles and all, and love anyway.  The leader knows the people, their strengths and limitations—and loves anyway, and they change each other.

Large-scale leadership is totally different.  People to whom we have always been leaders and have never been a pregnant woman who miscarried or a man who just got his pilot’s license or a kid who grew up and just graduated from trade school or joined the union or got a job—people for whom we are just leaders want us to be leaders always.  They want us to be above getting sick and making mistakes and changing our minds.  They want someone dependable and reliable who is leaderly all the time.  There should be the suggestion of a life in the background, but if it doesn’t serve them in some way, they don’t want to know.  If the followers did know—about the flu or the death or the child’s graduation—they wouldn’t know what to do with it.  It would sit limp and uncertain in their hands, because they know that the leader is part of them in a way that they are not part of the leader.  It’s not easy.

This is the difference between being a small church in the woods and being a beacon, and it scares us.  Not just the prospect of a changed relationship between the membership and the leaders, although that is part of the story.  Not just the prospect of different relationships within the congregation, although it makes an easy target.  We also know that becoming a beacon—a church with a large presence in the community—means becoming an institution that leads; it means becoming a congregation of leaders.  And we’re not sure we want that.  We’re not sure we can do it.  It makes us hesitant.  It makes us uneasy.  It makes us hyper-aware of all the things we claim to be that we wish we did perfectly but maybe we don’t.  It makes us look around our house with the eyes of a visitor and notice the peeling paint in the corner and the clutter from last week’s art project, and maybe we shouldn’t have a big party after all, what with the leaky faucet and the ragged tablecloth, maybe we should just tuck ourselves into our cozy living room with the people we already know; maybe we can just have a little potluck and keep things the way they are.  We have all seen what popular culture and the news media do to people who are big and successful and then turn out to be flawed.  They are challenged, they are derided, they are tried and convicted before charges are even filed.

There are options for individuals: individuals can disappear; individuals can be martyred. For institutions, there is no release, and no forgiveness.

No wonder we’re scared.  Why would anyone choose that path?  Why would anyone choose that life?  Somehow sometime someone is bound to mess up—it’s part of who and how we are.  We never stop being human.  So leadership starts to look like a path that ends in destruction, and unpleasant destruction at that.  Since public humiliation is not popular, why would anyone take it on?

Sometimes it is worth facing death for what we believe in.

That’s the obvious answer—we are called to work for justice even when the work is hard. But there’s another, more subtle, more important answer.

Institutions are different from people.  At their best they are stronger and wiser and more persistent to the tune of generations.  Institutions can live out and live down the vast majority of public scandals; institutions are adaptable in ways that individuals never can be; leaders move on, people come and go, but an institution, a good and useful and necessary institution, will endure.

And so institutions, despite the risk, are called to the hardest work of leadership, because they, composed of structures and individuals who create them, are strong enough to do it.

We are strong enough to do it.

When we remember that man in front of the tank; when we remember the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, when we remember Gandhi, when we remember James Reeb, when we remember the people who crashed their 9/11 plane into a field in Pennsylvania, only a few of us anywhere in the world are privileged to remember the people themselves.  For the rest of us what we remember are icons, single acts, single moments.  What we remember are the things in them that made us wish we were more than we ever can be.  None of them lived perfect lives; their days like ours were fraught with doubts and mistakes, errors in judgment and anger and fears. But what we want to remember—because it is what we need to remember—is the stuff that calls us to better lives.

What an institution can give us which an individual cannot is an ongoing and sustained leadership; a place for connection; something concrete that is bigger than ourselves.  Causes are important but they wax and wane; compelling issues come and go.  Institutions keep bringing us back to the larger story, to the bigger picture, to the multi-generational trends of human existence and the work needed to continue to be good humans, alone and in community.  What an institution can give us is the support we need to live interdependently, and do it well. But such institutions require people—people to make them and people to sustain them—and that that

is the work of religion.

That is the work of faith.

That is the work that has been so ably taken up by vast congregations of thousands of strongly- convicted members and their pastors.  They are leaders in this world.  They are calling us to a particular kind of life together, and people are hearing.  People are listening.  People are being convinced.  They are beacons for their beliefs, beacons for their members, beacons for their vision of a good future, and people are hungry—people are starving for a vision of a good future, and they are signing right up because there’s not much in the way of strong vision out there. There’s not much in the way of hope on our streets or in our factories or at our schools. And even though the decision about what the vision is could be a discussion, it could be a dialogue, it could be a conversation, it is not.  It is nearly always not.  And why? Because there’s usually only one voice out there.  There’s only one image, only one candle in the darkness, and don’t you know everyone who’s looking for dropped pennies is going to flock to the light.

And it’s a shame.  Because people are like this: we need to see our options.  We need to know what’s out there.  If someone offers us a drink we ask, “what have you got?” What have you got—because we want to know what our choices are, we want to know what is on the table.  We want to make an informed and well-made and careful decision.  And we can only do that if we know as much as possible first.

Everyone else is just like that, just like us.  But when people in our world in this country here today ask “What have you got?”  there’s often only one answer.  There’s only one bright light; there’s only one harbor beacon.

So they choose about it—they choose for, or the choose against, but that’s where the choosing stops.  They can’t make a better decision, they can’t know what else is on offer, because in most places right now, nothing else is on offer.  There’s other stuff out there, but it’s tucked in a back corner, or it’s hidden in the woods, and they don’t even know we’re here.

And that

is a tragedy.

That is a travesty.

That is a failure of us and our systems and our lives and our convictions, and it is a fixable failure.  It is a problem with a clear and present and powerful solution, and it is up to us to choose whether we will step up.

And at this moment in our history, the choice really is ours.

We can decide that our house is too messy, that our lives are too scary, that we lead in other places at other times and that that’s enough for this lifetime.  We can decide not to do more than we already have; we can decide that we are too small or too busy or that this town doesn’t really need our voice anyway.

Or we can decide differently.  We can decide radically.  We can decide to stand up.  We can decide to speak out.  We can decide to take it on and embrace the work handed down to us by generations of leaders before us.

And if we are going to do this work, this good work, this important work, if we are going to let our voices be heard and our bodies be counted, then we have to figure some things out. Because we cannot be a beacon for what we are not.

We cannot be a beacon for who we are not.

We cannot stand up and shout to the skies what we do not understand, what we do not believe, what we do not live.

We cannot bear false witness; we cannot be false prophets.  Every person on this earth knows what falsehood sounds like, even if they cannot explain it, and lies will serve no one.

**

But we cannot let the pressure discourage us.  We cannot let the strain deter us.  We cannot say, as so many have tried to say, “I know I can, Lord, I know I could…but take someone else.”  It’s an old story, older than the Bible, but whether we believe our call comes from god or from community or from that deep and perfect place in our hearts, we all know there’s a call.  We have all felt that rising up.  We have all known the need to speak truth in the face of fear and injustice, and we cannot deny it.  We cannot reject it.  We cannot just walk away from it.  For this world needs our witness, friends, this world needs our message.  This world needs our truth to stand beside the other truths and our voice to rise up in the chorus of voices–we cannot be silent and we cannot be silenced; we must be heard.

We must be heard.

Because there are conversations out there, my friends, there are conversations and dialogues and discussions and if our voice is not there then they are not complete.  They are lacking balance. The people who are looking for options and seeking possibilities, the people who are like so many of us, searching for a spiritual home, for a spiritual answer, they are not getting the whole story.  They may find what they need elsewhere.  They may not need this church; they may not be looking for this church, but if they do not know about this church then they cannot freely decide.  And that is also an injustice.  They are not seeing the whole of the possibilities and we cannot let that happen.  Our message of hope is too important.  Our message of joy is too important.  Our message of possibility and examined truth and personal transformation in the context of community is too important.

And our own practice of speaking and living into justice is too important. Because we have spiritual practice, here in the Unitarian Universalist Association.  We have spiritual disciplines.

We come to weekly services.  That’s a practice.

We care for our community.  That’s a practice.

And we take seriously a commitment to justice, which means giving our time and money and energy to causes of our hearts—to soup kitchens and homeless shelters and rape crisis centers and food pantries and gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender organizations and peace work and veteran’s hospitals.  And that is a practice.

But we don’t just work behind the scenes, and we don’t just work as individuals.  We go as people of faith.  We go as people moved by religion.  We go as people doing our spiritual work in the world, and we go with a commitment to speak up when we know there is something to say.  And that is also a practice.

It is a hard discipline.  It is as challenging as scriptural study; it is as counterintuitive as fasting, it is as uncomfortable as sitting meditation.

And it is as important as all of them.

We go to do these things together because we are stronger together, we are wiser together, we have an institution that sustains us and encourages us together; we work together and we speak out together and we move together as one people bound by a common strength of hope and spirit and by the sustaining and compelling power of love.

We are called by our faith to this work.

And we are called by our faith to lead.

And I cannot imagine that we are going to let our fear restrain us.

I cannot imagine that we are going to let our trepidation censor us.

I cannot imagine that we are going to stand by and let these pivotal days pass through our fingers

when we could seize them and make them count.

These days are days of history, friends,

they are days of change.

hese are the days of tomorrow’s roots and we know what tomorrow can be;

we know what tomorrow can have

we know what tomorrow can become

if only we speak up, stand up, and let our voices be heard.

We can be a beacon

and our light will shine to places beyond our wildest dreams.

This is the church we support.

This is the church we are.

Blessed be

and amen.

Another Sunrise
March 23, 2008 (Easter)
Ellsworth, Maine

He never really expected to see another sunrise, not after the crucifixion and such.  –there’s only so much a body can endure before it gives up the ghost.  Besides, he wasn’t sure what kind of terms he’d be on with god, not after the weeping and gnashing of teeth in the garden, and then the fear and the cold of being so very alone, right there at the end between the two others, the rude one and the nice one.  It wasn’t much to make you believe in miracles, even though he knew he should, even though he knew he was supposed to, but by the last few hours he was really just tired and cold, really cold, waiting for it to be over like the 40 days in the desert. It hadn’t even been that long between the beginning and the end, just a few years or so, a few years of talking and walking and hoping and dreaming between the visions in the desert and the night on the cross.  A few years to tell people what he believed, and in the end he wasn’t even sure what he believed anymore.

But when the guards came for him, he figured it was all over.  And he had died on the cross.  He had very nearly died before he ever got there.  So when he rolled over and squinted in the light three days later, he figured he was in some kind of afterlife.  The scriptures had always been vague on what happened after death, and the rabbis never had much to say, either, so he looked up at the women bathing his brow and sighed.  If this was heaven, he could handle it.  Except he hurt.

**

Maybe there was no second sunrise.  Maybe he really did die, asphyxiated and suffering and abandoned, and maybe he didn’t rise again, not in the way we usually understand the story. Maybe the women sat and wept over his body and then bore him away to a burial in a place where they could weep over him in peace.

**

If there wasn’t, if it was over, the sun would never rise again, which is surely how it felt that second day.  The 31st psalmists had it right: eyes, ears, and belly could all be consumed in grief, and the story could end there.

Sometimes we need a crucible, that hot, intense space that burns away everything inessential. Love does that, and hate, and terror, and grief—we rely on our emotions to tell us when our logic has gotten the better of our good sense.  We rely on our emotions to tell us these things matter. And they do.  To us whose existences are so brief, the creation and destruction of life are the most pivotal events in the universe.  When they happen they capture our whole attention; nothing else comes close.

The intensity of emotion over the course of holy week  is incredible: fear, pain, grief, resurrection.  Just in case you had forgotten what really matters, holy week will bring it home.

Being alive is crazy work, hard, impossible, rough work that makes calluses of blisters as often as not.  It’s a miracle anyone survives it at all.  And yet

Look at us,
in possession of the same hands and feet
the same fingers and toes
the same hair and eyes as
any sainted sacred figure
of the long history of religion.
We are, in our essentials,
no less and no more than these great
people whom we have,
time and again,
called to lead us.
What excuses us, then, from
making the same miracles,
from having the same wisdom,
from doing the same hard and wonderful work?
How are we any less subject to the call of resurrection—
not to lay down and die but to take up the standard and live despite it all,
despite despair and exhaustion
despite obstacles and impossibilities,
despite the unlikelihood of thriving in a desert
fed on nothing but manna, locusts, honey.
Whether there is empirical truth to be had
anywhere in the historical record or not,
in the end it doesn’t matter.
He never expected to see another sunrise,
but the stories carry a truth
beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond anything but love and hope:
he rose in the early morning
and stole away in the darkness,
stole away to birth a faith that has survived
for over 2000 years.

We don’t know what happened to Jesus. Some readings of the Quran suggest that he survived, and traveled with his mother east into Persia, ending perhaps in Kashmir. He was, after all, only on the cross for six hours, far less than it would ordinarily take to die by crucifixion. He was, after all, taken down by special request, and entombed in a private cave. At least, that’s what the available writings tell us.

Other readings of the literature suggest that he must have died, that survival would have been beyond unlikely into impossible, that if he had simply survived crucifixion that would have been miracle enough and the early Christians would not have needed to make more of it than it already was. (various web sources). We cannot know, not at this time in this place with the tools we have.

So we are left with the unlikely but compelling story of the resurrection, a hero killed too early and raised from his early grave by a faith stronger than death. We are born wanting the world to be fair, wanting the good guys to win in the end. The story of the resurrection is nothing if not the ultimate in superhero literature: an unlikely star rising from humble beginnings to bring a message of hope, love, and peace for all people. The story doesn’t work without the resurrection—if Jesus stays dead, if he is killed by the crucifixion and gets buried, his legacy lives but it’s no longer amazing. He was wise, but so were a hundred other people. He was gentle, but so were thousands around him. What makes him inspiring is that he didn’t get killed or kill anyone. The forces of tradition are not vanquished, not banished, not destroyed. The forces of tradition are simply brought to balance with the forces of innovation, his innovation, the message of hope and healing and unity that he preached during his life.

There are other versions, ones that sympathize with Judas, that leave us to wonder about Pilate, that leave us grasping for the humanity in the other players, certain that no story can be as cut- and-dried as this tale of Holy Week now seems. But lost in the scrabbling for definitive historicity is the fact that, true or not, the story has power. The story has meaning. The story has grown beyond its truth or fiction, fascinating though those questions are, into an archetype as compelling as Cinderella. A child, born with questionable parentage in an uncertain time under a tyrannical occupation, rises to such unlikely power that he is killed before his radical message causes significant unrest. But he rises again and in the original ironic twist, the faith that turns on his resurrection narrative becomes the state religion for the occupying empire.

No wonder Mel Gibson thought he could make a movie out of it. It has all the elements of good story: intrigue, unlikely hero, crisis, climax, triumph.

And so in many ways it no longer matters what really happened, because the story, like all good stories, has taken on a life of its own. This story is a story about fear and pain and speaking one’s own truth, and making change and martyrdom and success, and the price of that success.

And that’s what matters.

Because we all have fear and pain, we’re all faced with the possible consequences of speaking our truths, we all have to decide what will most effectively make change and what price we are willing to pay for it. And we all hope for hope, the hope of renewal, of rebirth, of people to carry on our legacy when we can do no more.

Can you imagine what life would be
if we were not surrounded by death,
if we were not dependent on decay
for our own fragile existence?
Can you imagine life without balance
without counterpoint
without pain or suffering or struggle keeping us on our toes?
It might be bliss.
Or it might not.  We might lose context, we might lose meaning
we might lose the need for hope.
**
He never really expected to see another sunrise but somehow
the stories are clear and consistent on this,
he did,
somehow he woke,
somehow he felt his spirit in his body
somehow he was flesh and blood enough to be embraced by his companions
somehow he came back
**
the stories are clear
the telling consistent:
on the third day he rose;
when the women went
and rolled back the stone
they found the cave empty,
the tomb vacant,
the body missing,
and they were afraid.
The oldest forms of the oldest gospel
appear to end here,
mystery intact;
possibility rife.
The options are comforting:
we can believe
but our belief is not tested,
and our source does not undermine its credibility
with a miracle too big for us to understand.

We are left to struggle with our own human craving for a salvation larger than life and a hero to match—in the face of challenges and frailties and empires that win against all odds and despite all justice, we want desperately to believe in a god who will appear from somewhere and save us, who will set things right, who will punish the wicked and reward us for putting up with it for all these years.

We want to believe it because that’s not typically how our world works.  We can spend an entire lifetime beating our little fists against a system that seems to reward the canny and the clever regardless of morality and grace; we can spend every one of all of our days absorbed in the unfairness of it all, and we can be right, but not vindicated, not supported, not protected.  It’s discouraging.  It’s disheartening.  It’s enough to make a person put down hope for a just world and embrace cynicism and Machiavellian tactics because at least they get things done.

But religion exists to move us beyond that, to offer us a hard climb out of the pit of despair that threatens us with every breath.  Religion exists to convince us, against all the long arc of history, that there is good in the world, and that it is stronger than evil.  It’s not easy.

getting anything hopeful done in this world requires a kind of persistent rising from the dead, a calling up from the floor and rising out of the ashes.  The model of Jesus and his resurrection, the triumph of Christianity from its humble origins as the crazy ramblings of a carpenter’s son is the ultimate in miracle tales and relies surprisingly little on the historical question of rising from the grave.  Even in branches of Christianity that follow Paul, where the salvific death is more important than the teachings, it is the model of God’s ultimate love and sacrifice that makes the story work.  It is John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that makes the power.  No longer are we caught as pawns in a chess game between capricious fates or disinterested deities; we are the focus of a love greater what most of us can even imagine. And at the same time, isn’t that what every parent, every teacher, every mentor does?  Do we not all give our charges to the world out of love?  Is that not the work of creation and re-creation, and are not these the resurrection of our greatest hopes, our greatest dreams, our greatest ideals? When we seek meaning we begin by giving ourselves and when it is time we pass our legacies to those who come afterwards, and we hope they give what we could not.  The resurrection is therefore the story of every one of us, resurrected and resurrecting, at once the light and the hope of light’s return.  At some point we all stand trembling before the mouth of the cave and wonder where our beloved child has gone who was only days ago safely wrapped and tucked away; and when we realize that they have risen and walked we are afraid, as afraid for them as we are for the world, now that we are no longer in charge; now that we realize what power we have held in our small and insignificant hands.

Each night a child is born is a holy night (Fahs) and each time a child is risen is a miracle.

And each child has days, no matter how we work to avoid it, when they don’t expect another sunrise, when whatever is happening seems a little too big for the frail humanity which is trying to contain it.  Each of us wakes up one morning astonished at being awake, astonished at the brightness and bigness of the sun, and aware, profoundly aware, that we hurt, and that that wasn’t part of the waking-up-again that we expected.  The loss of innocence and the sudden knowledge that if we can overcome that (whatever that was) we can overcome anything, which means we have some major work to do in the world, is that pivot point called coming-of-age, when we move from an understanding of ourselves based in the self to an understanding of ourselves based outside our own skin and bones.

We are all resurrected.  Jesus just has the best story about it, because his story has been made big, bigger than one man and one community in one moment in one history, bigger than specifics, bigger than one empire, even.  The story of Jesus the way we tell it today is the story of hope and possibility and the chance that one person really can change the world.

And if we are all children of god or of the same great universe, then we are all equally qualified to change the world.  We are all qualified to perform miracles.  We are all qualified to heal the sick, to comfort the sorrowful, to preach wisdom, and to be leaders for ourselves and for others.

As we move toward greater understandings of the historical possibilities we do not strip the bible of its sacredness or of its power; indeed, we increase it.  If we can understand what happened, how Jesus healed and led, then we have no excuse—we, too, can heal.  We, too, can lead. Common Christian theology makes Jesus an intermediary—a more accessible face of God.  He’s also an example—not creating the world in seven days, but healing the world’s ills.  It’s an example we can all aspire to–more than the unreachable goal of perfection we have this man, this human, who makes good works possible, even for our small hands.

We are, every one of us, sacred in the eyes of our loved ones.  Our beloveds are more real, more vital, more immediate reminders than anything else of all that we want to be and all that we wish to do in this world.  Must we not claim that honor and that responsibility with all the grace of a god?

Blessed be

and amen.

reading: retelling of The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

That story,
the one about the boy?
This is not how we want our lives to go,
the persistent discontent
but too often we learn that giving
until we are nothing but stumps
is the only way to be;
too often we learn that to be truly useful
we must be used up,
and so we try to give
until we are empty.
There is no balance in that,
except the giant balance that is the relatively closed system
of this planet of ours,
where almost nothing is created or destroyed,
but where transformation is the word of the day
every day
and has been for nearly 5 billion years,
and where occasionally visitors from outer space
drop something we can use
(like amino acids. or water.)
But our daily balance is not served by our extermination;
we are not like the insect females who
eat their partners
recycle the now-spent parts
into the next generation.
Parents should not be consumed by their children,
nor children by their parents,
nor friends or relatives or perfect strangers
by each other.
We are not meant to be cannibals,
but you couldn’t tell it by the way we often are with each other,
our desperation overriding our sense of community and our sense of self
until we have completely absorbed each other.
What a way to live!
We have choices,
we know we have choices,
the wheeling of life and of time through eternity takes the shape of balance
and we know we have choices.
And this week the equinox comes again
to remind us again
of our choices,
that we are not meant to suck each other dry,
that morning and evening are two equal parts
of one day,
the unity of time from Aristotle’s dramas
and from our own sleeping and waking.
Imagine a life where we slept and woke with the sun and you will still see balance,
even here in the north where we have such nights in winter, such long slumbers,
and such days in summer that we would barely touch the pillow—
even here we would even out
it would all even out
in a full year of days we would get the same sleep
as someone whose bed was on the equator,
perfectly twelve of each
every day
and every night the same.
The universe is given to balance.
We are products of the universe,
given to balance.
We are neither meant to stay up all the time
nor to sleep forever;
Sleeping Beauty was an anomaly
not a role model,
although we all have our days when her 100 years
look pretty good.
Ecclesiastes said it, too:
To everything there is a season
and a time for every purpose under heaven.
Every thing has its paired thing,
its equal and opposite
its balance.
And as there is time for one
so there is time for the other.
Even the hard
even the sad
even the impossible.
There are disappointments and there are triumphs;
the temple falls but Esther prevails,
and through it all the world keeps turning
we keep sleeping and waking
and sleeping and waking,
and it looks like that’s it.
It looks like that’s the whole story.
But it’s not
of course,
because you knew there would be more.
Because any time we talk about balance
about give and take,
about equal and opposite forces,
it sets up a binary.
Remember the seesaw? It’s a useful image,
two people sitting at opposite ends of a 2×12,
which is propped up in the middle.
As each person falls, they push off the ground and they go skyward,
sending the other person down;
back and forth
back and forth
it’s one of those perfect childhood pictures
since no one can lose
and no one can win
and the only way you can do this
is if you have no ulterior motive
or nagging to-do list.
Up.
Down
Up
Down.
As adults we have to pay someone to make sure we do 100 ups
and 100 downs
and then we can call it a workout.
But as children it is just the thing to do
because the grass is green and the skies are perfectly clear and bright
and because it feels like it gives you choices: you can walk or you can fly.
Now occasionally the seesaw gets becalmed.
Not very often,
but enough that we’ve all seen it.
The two people are so perfectly matched
and so utterly absorbed in other things
that they forget to push
and little
by
little
they
slow
and
slow
until
they
stop.
At balance.
Not up enough to fly
and too far from the ground to walk.
The seesaw takes advantage of levers
to make the whole game possible
because a small force at the end of a long lever becomes a large force.
This is not a new idea;
It was Archimedes who said
give me a long enough lever
and a fulcrum on which to place it
and I shall move the world.
So these small forces on the ends of a ten foot lever with a fulcrum in the middle
are strong enough
if only they have something to push on.
But they are not stuck.
They have less force as they move toward the pivot point;
if they edge toward the center they will unbalance the lever
and the other person will land on the ground.
We fear this,
that if we move toward our opposite we will give them some of our power
and a head start.
And besides, balance is the way of the world,
so why should we blink first?
But that kind of balance is wasted potential;
we could both creep toward the center;
we could both get help;
We have choices.
And in most situations the middle of the seesaw isn’t empty at all;
there are more massive objects closer to the center—
the majority is not out at the edges, but toward the middle.
And that majority has less force because it isn’t at the end of a lever.
A majority at the end of a lever gets a LOT done.
Anyone at the end of a lever gets a LOT done.
So when balance is not the order of the day,
or when a small number of people have a lot to do,
the working place is at the edges.
But when balance is the order of the day,
we need to remember that there are lots of people who are practically standing on the fulcrum,
standing on the balance point;
we are probably standing there, too,
wondering why we are outweighed by a tiny little group at the other end.
They are at the end, that’s why.
But the real problem is that we all think we’re standing on a seesaw. That’s the picture in our heads.
It has two ends.
If we’re lucky, we remember that we can sit along its full length.
But we tend to forget that our world is not two dimensional.
When we say balance in this world,
when we say equal
we cannot think for a moment that we mean balance or equality
between two opposing things.
For one thing, they are not usually actually opposed to each other.
But the greater mistake is that there are many more than two things,
strung out along an infinite number of planes and continuua
running every which way through this time and space.
When the sun rises and sets
on a twelve hour day
it is pulled along a vast number of possibilities
and it pulls a vast number of possibilities
seasons and circadian rhythms and planting cycles and birthing and growing and warmth and rain and life,
and all the infinity of life,
riding the comet tail
of the circle of the sun.
We seek balance
and we have balance
but it is not balance for a life walked on a high wire.
It is balance for an orb
balanced on the tips of our fingers,
which only deigns to stay there
because of its spinning.
o interlude: circle round for freedom
The sun will rise
The moon will rise
The earth will flower
And all people will be well.
*
There are old rituals
As old as the hills
About planting
About life
About balance.
But the wisdom is older than that
As old as the sun
As old as the stars.
Since the very beginnings of this world
motion and balance have sung siren songs
at the hub of rotations
on the axis of revolutions.
The predators and prey have only kept company
under ancient rules
from ancient skies.
Anything we see twice
is booked for repeat engagements
by disinterest and attraction
playing tug-o-war with the calendar.
The amazing part is
that we fool ourselves into thinking
there is anything new under the sun.
We are all, after all,
turning together;
our lives and the seasons
even air and water and earth
are cycle-driven. Just because we cannot see the edge of the wheel
doesn’t mean it doesn’t turn.
An assortment of seafarers
over an assortment of years
taught us that.
But it somehow seems
we have not been paying attention
because we seem to think
that balance
is hard.
We seem to think that balance must be struggle
that balance must be strife,
that getting there is hard,
that falling off is easy.
I could blame it on the balance beam
in grade three gym class
but that would be unfair
to anyone who was ever a child.
Because when we learn things in school
that don’t hold up in real life,
we don’t even take them through the doors
marked reality.
Children know
adults forget,
but children do start out by knowing.
In The little Prince
the narrator is a grown-up
who meets a strange little man in a desert.
They have both crash-landed;
one from an airplane
one from another planet.
The little man demands a drawing of a sheep
and no drawing is good enough
until the drawing is of a sheep in a box,
where all that is visible is the box.
Perfection is only available
in the mind,
and we all have different visions of perfect.
But once he figured it out
balance was easy;
goldilocks found balance
in the third bowl of porridge
and the third chair
and the third bed,
so easy:
why do we forget?
We forget because of fear.
It is not lack of skill but hesitation most often
that makes us wobbly.
I never teetered at the edges of cliffs
until I believed I might fall;
I no longer dare to peer into the abysses of canyons
without a railing
or a very low center of gravity.
What a loss.
It’s a tragedy,
this losing our balance,
this ongoing battle
between the real and the sensible.
Like driving
we must keep our eyes on the big picture
to stay on track
otherwise we make minute,
exhausting
continuous
adjustments
waste our energy
get nowhere
and eventually crash,
having hated the whole journey.

When a pendulum swings
it eventually rests
in the middle of its arc.
When two containers of water are connected
they will seek the same level.
Animals who eat and animals who are eaten
will live by each other’s successes and failures
and the air and water we have
cycles endlessly between earth and sky.
This is the way of our world,
which itself turns on an axis
revolves around the sun
and holds the moon in orbit
–at least for now.
We are always building a new balance,
always working toward something stronger,
more stable,
less ultimately chaotic.
Whether it looks like chaos to us,
sand grains on an endless beach,
is entirely without consequence.
As the universe bends toward chaos
it bends toward balance
toward an order that stretches
beyond horizons
into galaxies;
when the pushing forces
and the pulling forces
are perfectly matched,
there is balance.
Chaos is just a latticework too big to see;
all order looks like chaos if you get close enough.
This is what makes perspective important,
because at just the right distance
anything can look random
or anything can look planned.
The arguments for intelligent design
are funny like that;
they say that we and the world
are too well-planned
for a series of happy accidents.
Whether there is or there isn’t
a god,
I think figuring it out
based on what we can see
is incredibly presumptuous.
Whatever is at work–
random chance or a giant watchmaker—
has a system so vast
of which we are such a tiny part
that any perspective we bring to the table
is entirely self-centered
no matter how far our telescopes can reach.
Which is not to say that we will ever stop trying
but really
we can only guess from here.
**
Krishna is the god
that the Puritans would have loved to hate
if they had been paying that kind of attention.
The eighth incarnation
of the middle god
of Hinduism’s trinity
he comes to earth to help out,
floats down the river in a basket
and gets picked up by ranchers.
That’s the short form.
His basic task is to keep the world together—
he arises from Vishnu, who preserves—and his tactics
are as playful as possible.
My family god is Kali
but it is Krishna’s playful creativity
that carries my name.
Luckily Hindu gods aren’t quite as jealous
as their western counterparts
and I keep both idols in my house
one for power
one for play
but of course, the power of play is some of the strongest in the world.

We’ve come unbalanced here,
despite the twice-annual reminder of the sun
in its race across space,
creating time.
We have misnamed a desperate grab for control
a power play as if there’s something
powerful about control wrested instead of earned;
as if there is anything playful about any of it.
We’ve lost the balance in our race for order,
for a carefully controlled reality
where everything can be predicted
and nothing is out of line.
We lose that at our peril.
Even the sun, carefully ordered,
doesn’t stay quite on the clock.
The world is more chaotic
than previously thought;
perhaps more beautiful, too.
Looking at a reproduction
is not like looking at an original Monet;
there is something wonderful
about those brush strokes
by that artist,
and the equinox
is one of those brushstrokes
you could stare at for hours,
this moment
when night and day
tip evenly toward each other
and make the isosoles triangle
that they reach for 363 nights
of the year
and miss.

On these two days
on these two nights
we get a brief glimpse
of the grace and ease
of natural balance
that we have managed to leave alone
all these years.
We have not yet found a way
to alter the course of the sun
and that may be our saving grace.
Twice a year the sun pauses in the skies
and twice a year it balances in motion.

More often than not, our human imbalance
comes from fear
of lack;
or fear of desire.
Now the Buddha taught that desire
was to be released,
but I don’t think he meant
by having everything you ever wanted.
And lack,
beyond food,
water,
shelter,
is relative.
We would have those same fears
as itinerant hunters,
but we would not keep more than we could carry;
we would not eat more than we could hold.
This settling down habit
is a powerful force for hoarding
because you never know
and all objects have inertia—
once acquired they become very heavy
and hard to release again.
Ever tried to walk a tightrope carrying a full set of luggage?
We make our lives
and our balancing
harder that they need to be.
B