by Rev. Thomas Disrud

 A sermon given November 19, 2000

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

We come this day in thanksgiving for the blessings in our lives:

for this community, for our city, our country, our world.

Let us open our hearts in love and let us lift up our voices in song.

Come now, and let us worship here together.

 Before I became a minister, I worked as an editor at a daily newspaper. One of my favorite jobs was clearing the news wires, which carried stories from wire services and other newspapers around the country. With the volume, we needed a system to keep all of the stories straight. So each story was assigned a priority.

Y was the most important, something that absolutely needed to get in. At the other end of the spectrum were the b stories—b for briefs. They got in if there was room. The m’s were the maybe stories—not all that exciting, but they were news. W was for world. X was for business.

One thing I learned quickly in this job is that a lot happens in the world every day—and that most of it is not very uplifting news. Hundreds or thousands of people die in accidents or from diseases that don’t have cures. Others die because someone else has power over them. And disasters happen all the time and there is no way to explain them.

It took me a while to get used to this on a regular basis. At first I would go home from work and my head would be spinning. All this suffering in the world. What could I do about it? After a while it is not surprising that my favorite stories became the ones with the "o" priority. O stood for odd.

They were about someone somewhere doing something unusual. They’re called "Hey, Mabel" stories because you want to call up a neighbor to see if they read it. Some were funny, others were very sad. They are the kinds of stories where a person is robbing a bank and writes his name and address on the holdup slip that he passes to the teller. Or the person who has a large collection of pets in a small apartment, and finds one day that the boa constrictor has reduced the population of the smaller dogs while the owner was out. I don’t remember most of these stories, but most of them would have a quote from either a police officer, or a firefighter or a doctor who would say, "I’ve been a doing this job for 20 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this."

I liked these stories not only because they were funny most of the time, but also because I was able to imagine the person in the story. Sometimes stories about great disasters or wars are pretty difficult to get my head around. People doing stupid things, on the other hand, I could usually relate to on some level.

And in a world where too often we want to escape from the news, we have to find ways to do that. We hear about the violence, but don’t know how to stop it. We see struggles that have been happening for centuries, and we feel powerless to do much about them. The planet is warming up and we wonder how that is ever going to be reversed.

Sometimes it can all lead to feelings of despair. There is so much going on in the world that sounds so awful, and we don’t quite know what difference we can make. We wonder how it will be for the next generation.

For the past couple weeks, the hourly reports on the Florida election count have left me with a variety of emotions. I have felt glued to the coverage to see what the next development is and almost at the same time like to want to pull away and not listen until something has been decided. I watch for a while and then I have had enough. I hear about the lawsuits and then hear from the spin doctors. I have found myself wondering how much it matters who wins. That after all this, whoever is declared the winner will limp into the office without a mandate to do much of anything. We could be in a couple of long years.

It is no wonder that the world wide web is a hotbed on commentary on the subject. In one day last week I got three versions of an alleged decree from the Queen of England declaring that since we have failed to elect a president after so many days, she is revoking our independence and restoring the monarchy. She pledges to take over all states, commonwealths and territories, except Utah, which she does not fancy.

There will no longer be such a thing as American English, all Americans are to re-learn the national anthem, "God Save the Queen," and football will now be called by its proper name, soccer.

And another report has Bush and Gore settling their differences by going mano a mano and arm wrestling. In the end, it was decided, one would become president and the other would become first lady.

When we cannot make sense of the events around us, or do not know what to do with them, we do our best to cope. We try to get some perspective on it. Maybe we laugh. Maybe we have a good cry. Sometimes that is all we feel we can do. Sometimes we may just want to pull back, hoping we can get some perspective. And it may be we engage with others to try to figure it out. And this is good

There is an impulse in each of us to connect our lives with the lives of others, and in this process, to find some meaning as we go through life. And this is important, because if we cannot stay connected in some way, then we are likely to find ourselves isolated from others.

Who am I in relation to the world around me?

Too often it is easy to just want to hear the good news. I’m always struck by those surveys where people say they want to hear more news that makes them feel good. That is great, but much of the news in the world is not good and we might actually be kind of bored if everything we heard was just positive.

We’re called to open ourselves to the spectrum of what is happening around us. If we don’t, we may end up cutting ourselves from more than we think. It may be we fail to see the richness of what it is we have been given, in all its dimensions. It may be we will fail to experience life as fully as we can. It may be we give away some of our power and may start to lose our hope.

If we simply take shelter from the world, we may in the process miss much of what is life giving. We learn from those things that delight us, but also from those things we can’t fully understand, those things that challenge us.

The world is an amazing mix of wonder and complexity, and we are asked again and again to look at the world in all of its fullness, and to wrestle with its complexity.

When I moved to Berkeley to attend seminary, I was struck by how many people were living on the streets there. It did not take long, however, before I found that I really wasn’t noticing the homeless people much. All of a sudden they started to blend into the background just like the buildings. I suspect it was my way of coping.

But then early one morning, in the middle of winter, I’m walking into a coffee shop. There aren’t many people around. There’s a heavyset woman with a long, sad face sitting outside the shop. As I’m crossing the street in front of her she happens to cough. It is a deep, severe, cough. There’s something in that cough that chills me just to hear it. It is a cough I will never forget.

I don’t know what it was about her that morning. But in that hearing, I was connected with her. The cough made its way through my shields and my screens. I don’t know much of her story, but I know that she is someone who entered my life that day and somehow changed it. And because of that, I’m somehow a different person.

In hearing that cough, I was given a gift. In connecting with her, I was somehow opened up a little more to the world. She is now someone I carry with me. When I return to Berkeley, I look for her.

As we witness life, we are called to cultivate a sense of gratitude. One where we give thanks for all that is our life. One where we are called again and again to look at the world with its amazing mix of pain and joy. As we witness and give thanks, the personal becomes the universal, and we come to see ourselves as part of the big picture. We see the despair in our individual lives and how it connects with suffering in the world.

When we feel isolated and alone, it is easier to look at what we don’t have than at what we do have. If we come at life full of expectations about what we are due, the things we want to have, the way we want the world to be ordered, we’re probably going to be disappointed because things just won’t measure up.

It’s a little different, though, when we can look at all of life through the lens of gratitude and see what we have been given comes in the form of an unexpected blessing. Opening ourselves in this way is not always an easy perspective to find, but it does bring us see the world in a new light.

When I meet a person I don’t particularly like, I have to ask myself what it might be that I am to learn from that person. If I can ask myself that question, it may be I can better understand what is going on with me. It may help me see that person not so much as an irritant, but as a gift that has brought a lesson to my life.

Does this make everything seem all right? No. Will the despair go away? No.

What may come is a sense of resonance with the world. We may feel more connected. It does not mean that everything is going to be all right, but that we are opening ourselves to the meaning that may come from any given event. It is a growing sense that we are connected to the world and all the life present here.

We start with the stories that are closest to home. With the stories of birth and death that happen every day. These are things that don’t make big headlines, but change our lives. We struggle to understand why people get cancer and why children are neglected. We try to understand random acts of violence and hatred.

And it is not that we will find all the answers. It may be we just get glimpses. We are asked to go on faith, knowing we can’t know everything, but that we will find all that it is we need to find.

Our charge is to be open to being surprised, open to what may come our way. To keep on going, even when the way is not clear.

A child writes this letter: "Dear God, I didn't think orange went with purple until I saw the sunset you made on Tuesday. That was cool!" -- Eugene

If we come to the world expecting nothing, then suddenly everything becomes a gift and seems to change.

We find ourselves surprised and opened to what something will mean for us. Everything, we see, is a gift and we have no choice but to recognize it and give thanks.

Sometimes all we need is the right question to shift our perspective on things.

Writer Sue Bender and her husband, in their early 60s, decided they needed to get their financial affairs in order and write a will and establish a living trust for their sons.

They meet with a lawyer and he asks them, "What would you like to do in case there’s an exploding turkey?"

"Exploding turkey?" she asks.

"What if the whole family was together at Thanksgiving and the turkey exploded?" he asks. "If the four of you were killed at that moment, who would you want to have your worldly goods?"

At first, the question was a little unsettling for her. Perhaps it was the image of the bird blowing up in front of her. But it later turned out to be quite fruitful. She writes that it made her think about what was most important in her life and how she remembers what is most precious. She writes that now, when she has a particularly difficult day, she makes what she calls a gratitude list. She writes down all those things she has been thankful for that day.

I don’t wish for any of us to have an exploding turkey this holiday, but I do hope we find surprises. A life of thankfulness comes with intentionality and awareness. It comes from putting ourselves forward in the world and seeing ourselves not as separate but connected. We see that we are not alone, but in relationship with everyone and everything. We don’t know the answers but we take steps toward them. We are called to fall down and embrace some mystery that is beyond us and also within us.

Living with such a sense of gratitude has been called the most primal form of worship.

Words of William Stafford:

It was all the clods at once become

precious; it was the barn, and the shed,

and the windmill, my hands, the crack

Arlie made in the axe handle: oh, let me stay

here humbly, forgotten, to rejoice in it all;

let the sun casually rise and set.

If I have not found the right place,

teach me, for, somewhere inside, the clods are

vaulted mansions, lines through the barn sing

for the saints forever, the shed and windmill

rear so glorious for sun shudders like a gong.

Now I know why people worship, carry around

magic emblems, wake up talking dreams

they teach to their children: the world speaks.

The world speaks everything to us.

It is our only friend.

Last week I spent three days in Chicago at a conference. On a free evening, I was walking down Michigan Avenue, a stretch called the Magnificent Mile, and snow was gently falling. I was struck by the beautiful shops, and their window trimmings. I was struck by the trees dressed in white lights that dance against the skyscrapers. I was struck by the shoppers mixing with the people going home from work. I am caught up in all the beauty. And in the midst of this, I see a homeless man, limping, wrapped in a dirty blanket, asking for spare change. My first response is to not want him to be in the picture. I want him to disappear. But then I catch myself, and I realize that no, he is also part of the picture. In fact in this beautiful and wonderful scene, he is a very important part. He makes it real. And with the next image, it all comes together. I see a group of men, working in freshly turned soil, and they are busily planting bulbs that will make their way up in the spring. There are hundreds of bulbs on the grounds waiting to be planted, and I’m amazed by how quickly they are doing their work. The men thrust a garden shovel into the dirt with one hand and just as quickly plant a bulb with the other hand. Everything fits together in this moment, and I find myself giving thanks for all of it.

It is good to know that flowers will be coming up in the spring.

May this be so. Amen.

LET US PRAY

Let us pray: God who moves in us, among us, through us, we give thanks for this day. We give thanks for the voices of children, for brilliant cold fall days, for the things we can understand, and for all those things we cannot. May we open ourselves to see all that life offers us. May we live in hope. May we live in joy. May we live with a deepening sense of gratitude. Amen.

 BENEDICTION

Benediction: I give thanks this day for each of you, for your voices, for your presence in the world. Go this day in love and go in peace. Amen.

Copyright 2000, by Rev. Tom Disrud.  All rights reserved.