Reverend Thomas Disrud

First Unitarian Church
Portland, Oregon

June 9, 1996

A few years ago during my time in seminary, I spent a summer working as a chaplain intern at a hospital in San Francisco. I was assigned to the heart floor - which meant that most of the people I saw were either heading into or coming out of heart bypass surgery. The hospital specialized in this procedure, which meant I would see 20 or 30 people each week who were having it. Unless there were complications, people would just be in the hospital for a few days. Seeing patients before and after the surgery, but not during, meant I didn't have a full appreciation. There usually weren't complications, so I came to see the surgery as pretty routine.

A couple weeks before the summer was over, my supervisor asked my intern group if we would like to be in the operating room to watch a heart bypass surgery. After talking with people all summer about the spiritual dimensions of major surgery, this seemed like a great opportunity. I was a both terrified and thrilled at the prospect of witnessing an operation.

The big day came. I got to the hospital early and another intern and I got into our surgical scrubs. We were escorted into the operating room and stood just a few feet from the man having surgery. I had visited with him the night before. We talked about his fears going into surgery. We talked about his family. We talked about his work. Entering the operating room, it was very cold. The man having the surgery was already under anesthesia and he was being further prepared for surgery. The medical professionals went about their business preparing for the surgery as we looked on. I also remember being a little startled by the somewhat festive air in the room. A popular radio station was playing. The first song that was played was "Slip Sliding Away." This wasn't exactly what I had expected. I didn't know if I should laugh or be mortified.

The surgery proceeded along, with everyone doing their jobs. I felt a little squeamish at times, but did OK. Everybody moved in motion and it all seemed effortless. The mood in the room changed when they came to a critical juncture in the surgery. After all the prep work is done, the heart and lungs are actually stopped and the blood is oxygenated with a machine. When the heart is stopped, the team has a limited amount of time to do the actual bypass. It was at this point in the surgery when the tone in the room shifted from being pretty relaxed to a feeling that everyone was especially focused on the task.

Before long, the bypass was finished and it was time to lightly shock the heart and have it start pumping on its own. Most of the time this goes fine, but not always. This was a critical juncture in the surgery. A surgeon took two small, stainless steel paddles and tucked them under the heart. Everyone cleared the table and the heart was given a shock. It worked. The heart was beating. You could feel the tension in the room ease. The heart beating was a miraculous sight. Next came the lungs. They started to fill with air, slowly growing larger and larger.

Before long they were expanding and contracting with rhythm. They contracted in and out, in and out, …

I was amazed. Tears came to my eyes. This was the breath of life. I was left in awe of medical technology, and also the human body, its ability to breathe in and breathe out. I was witnessing something amazing. I had experienced life in a way I had not had the privilege to before. Seeing the lungs contract and expand in rhythm with the heart was an amazing sight. One I will never forget.

That experience in the operating room came to me this past year, when I had the privilege of being with a woman in her last hours of life. She had hung on weeks longer than expected after a long bout with illness. She had not come out of a coma or eaten for weeks. She had lost a great deal of weight and was down to skin and bones.

Her appearance was startling, but what I remember most about sitting by her bedside was her breathing. Her forced but steady breathing. She was so close to death but also so clearly alive. The breathing was a sign that she was hanging on, that she was not yet ready to go. This had gone on longer than anyone expected. Her breathing was to me a sign of tenacity. She was going to hang on as long as she could. Witnessing her struggle left me in silence. I was in awe at watching her hang on and cling to breath.

Breathing is not something we think about a lot. We're too busy with other things. It is something that just happens. We can, so to speak, do it in our sleep. Unless I'm suffering with allergies or have a cold or some other ailment, I really don't think about it much. The Buddhists teach us to pay more attention to our breath. To sit or walk, quietly, focusing on the breaths we take. But I find that the distractions in life mean I don't think much about breath. I just do it.

But I've learned to think about it more this year. I have a friend who has been writing me as I've settled into Portland and the church. This year she has traveled with me during the inevitable ups and downs of the first year of ministry. At the end of every letter she leaves me with an important reminder. Take plenty of deep breaths.

Take deep breaths. That seems so simple, but I have come to see it as so very important. During the past year, it has been invaluable advice.

In the middle of the year a wise person showed me the difference between breathing with your chest and breathing with your diaphragm. It makes a great deal of difference. Quick, shallow breaths come from the chest. They come when you are stressed. The other kind help center you, they help calm you. They are sustaining. These are the kinds of breaths that singers take when they need a good dose of air. Sometimes, in the middle of something stressful, a good, deep breath, is all I need.

Mary Oliver asks the question: "What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us?"

What is the unnamable thing that connects all of us to the creation. I experienced it in the stories I told you about breath. I was aware at those times of the life of another person in ways I had not thought of it before. I also was more deeply aware of my own life, of my own breath.

What are the intangible things that connect us? What is the connective tissue we all have that makes us one with something larger? I find it hard to define sometimes, but I know it when I see it. Breathing is certainly a metaphor for this. Living is breathing. Sometimes it is harder than other times, certainly harder for some than for others. It is a constant force, something that is always with us.

What are those things that connect us with others? To live is to suffer, to have joy, to fall in love, to struggle, to search for meaning. We go along through life, and we get glimpses of this connection. It can happen in many places, in many ways. It is the awareness that we are part of something larger.

Being here, in this community, I've experienced it many times in the past year. In the midst of breathing deeply, I've been honored to witness these moments of connection. Our community is a dynamic place, in flux, growing and changing. In the midst of this I'm filled with examples of people reaching out to other people.

Connection happens when someone brings a meal to a family in times of need and stays for a few minutes to see how they are doing.

It happens when someone comes up to you after church and says: This iris is from my garden and I would like you to have it.

It happens when you take the time to see the film "The Color of Fear" and open yourself to your own wounds of racism in the presence of others.

It happens when you are at a Finance Committee meeting and carefully looking over the budget to see if it makes sense for the institution, and you ask about how the person next to you is doing.

It happens when a lay minister companions you through a loss in your life.

It happens when you come into the church office and answer the phone and connect somebody who needs to be connected to somebody else.

It happens when you are with a child and she asks a question that lets you know she is coming to understand a new dimension of who she are.

It happens when you sit through a board meeting and go over and over an issue before a decision is reached.

It happens when you are singing Spirit of Life and your voice blends with the voice of the person next to you.

It happens when a man who is lonely finds a community in a men's group.

The 15^th Century poet Kabir said: "Student, tell me, what is God? God is the breath inside the breath."

All these moments have in common the act of recognizing our commonalities, that we are able to see ourselves more fully in relation to others. As I breathe, you breathe. As I search for truth and meaning in my life, so do you. This brings us together. In the event of being with others, in experiencing their breaths and their laughs and their cries, we get a little closer to who we are as people. We come into that knowing that is the breath inside the breath.

This weekend our church has played host to the Summit on Ethics and Meaning. The event is led by Rabbi Michael Learner, editor of Tikkun magazine, who is championing what he calls a Politics of Meaning.

When he spoke on Friday at the City Club of Portland, he stressed a framework that focuses on commonalities, not differences. The central theme in his work is about connection. The need to build community. The summit taking place here this weekend is about working for a shift from a culture that would have us look to ourselves and ourselves alone, to a place where we look to others.

Learner articulates two views of our culture. One is focused on the commonalities we share, the other focuses on the things that make us different.

Learner holds up what he calls a market consciousness we live in. We are not seen as beings having inherent worth, as much as we are goods in a system of exchange. Values like compassion and friendship are undermined in this system. As we become goods to be exchanged, relationships are much more transient. We are in the relationship only as long as something better doesn't come along. The result of this is a feeling of uncertainty. We fear that our partner will simply cut a better deal and move on.

According to Learner, the religious right has capitalized on this pain, this feeling of alienation. They have claimed to be the only ones to speak about moral values. Learner articulates that what has really happened is that they have focused this pain on those who are characterized as different. It may be blacks, it may be gays, it may be single mothers - whoever it happens to be today. In this model, the differences between us are held up, not the commonalities. What I have, you can't have. What you have, I can't have. If I'm not happy, the best thing to do is blame the guy who I see as being different from me. The basis for relationships becomes selfishness, not love and compassion.

How we get out of this place is difficult to see. The patterns Learner holds up certainly are operative in much of what I see around me. And it is a difficult mindset to get out of. It is hard to know where to go. Learner's starting point is to build coalitions, relationships with others. To share stories, to share fears. To work together.

The words of Marge Piercy: "It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again after they said no, it starts when you say We and know who you mean, and each day you mean one more."

In his book "A Different Drum", M. Scott Peck tells a story called "The Rabbi's Gift".

The story is about a monastery that had fallen on hard times. It was once a great order, but many forces over time had caused it to dwindle. Now there were only five monks left - an abbot and four others, all over 70. Clearly they were a dying order. In the woods surrounding the monastery a rabbi from the nearly town had a hut he used for a retreat. As the abbot agonized over the imminent death of his order, he decided to visit the rabbi to ask if he could offer any advice to save the monastery.

The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him, saying that the same thing was happening in his town, that almost no one came to the synagogue anymore. So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. They read the Torah and quietly spoke things that mattered. When it was time for the abbot had to leave, they embraced each other. "It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years," the abbot said, "but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?'

"No, I am sorry," the rabbi responded. "I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you."

When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask what the rabbi had said.

"He couldn't help," the abbot answered. "We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving -- it was something cryptic -- was that the Messiah is one of us. I don't know what he meant."

In the weeks that followed, the old monks pondered the rabbi's words. Could he have meant one of the monks at the monastery? And if so, which one? Did he mean the abbot? If he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot, who had been the leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly he was a holy man. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred who was crotchety at times. But as they thought of it, even though he was a thorn in people's sides, he was virtually always right. But he surely could not have meant Brother Phillip, who was so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he had a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. And the last monk thought, of course the rabbi didn't mean me. He couldn't have possibly meant me. I'm just an ordinary person. Yet suppose he did?

The old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah.

People still occasionally came to visit the monastery's beautiful grounds Sometimes they would even go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did this, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something attractive, even compelling, about it. Without knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic or to pray. They began to bring their friends with them to this special place. And their friends brought their friends.

Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the older monks. After a while one asked if he could join the order. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and was a center of light and love in the realm.

In our lives, together here, may it be so. Amen.

Copyright © 2000, Reverend Thomas Disrud. All rights reserved.