by Rev. Thomas Disrud

A sermon given June 3, 2001

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

I remember how it was when we would go over to her house for dinner. She would be harried from the preparation of the meal. She would move through her kitchen surrounded by a sense of chaos. But then everything would be ready and it was time to sit down at the table. Before we could eat it was time to pray. She would clasp her hands together, and she would put her head on her hands, and she would give thanks and ask for blessings.

I don’t so much remember what she prayed for as much as I remember the devotedness present in her life. She was a woman of deep faith and she believed that nothing could separate her from a love that embraced her.

In her last years, she became blind and she was in a lot of pain with arthritis. And yet, the last time I saw her I remember what a sense of peace there was about her. She seemed content with the life she had at the time.

She is a person I think of sometimes. She was strong. She did not waver in her faith. She was a person who believed that no matter what the circumstances life presented you with, you would be given the strength to deal with it. Prayer, for her, was a way of reaching out to God. It was an ongoing conversation and it was what kept her grounded no matter what was happening for her. No matter what was going on, she knew she had a place where she could turn for comfort and solace.

Not all of us have an image of God like Cora Olson. We each have ways of reaching out to a presence we might call God, or the Divine or the Other. It is that spirit that connects us with all other beings. In that reaching out we have a relationship with that mystery we can never fully know or understand.

When I pray, I pray to God—in this I pray to some spirit of life I believe is present in the world—a spirit that connects me with all of life. This relationship is not a static thing. It is something that develops over time. It is something that moves and flows as we grow and change. We find ourselves in life searching for something that will give us meaning. A place where we can bring what it is we have in life and try to understand it.

We develop a life of prayer—whether we call it that or not. It is how we come to know ourselves as connected to something outside of ourselves. That we are somehow in relationship with a grace in the world. It may be a recognition of our highest ideals. It is a way that we come to an awareness that we are not alone, that we can put our intentions out there and in the event of reaching out, we’ll find what it is we need to find.

We each have different ways of being in the world. We see life in different ways. When I was younger, I looked at a person like Cora Olson and the steadfastness of her faith was not something I could understand. It was something that seemed old-fashioned and almost quaint. But I can look back at it now and see that it is not that at all. It was an abiding faith in life. It was a relationship with God that kept her going and gave her strength. She brought that strength into the world in all she did.

Each one of us finds our way in life. We come to see the world in certain ways, and we come to see how we are in relationship to the world. It is a way that our spirituality connects us to something larger. It may be simply a recognition of thankfulness. It may be a quest for clarity in our life.

There is no one way that has more meaning than any other. It may not be we know what to do until we are in that place of need. It may be that when we don’t know what else to do, we reach out in any way we can.

Last week on the National Public Radio show “This American Life,” they told the story of a young man in Austin, Texas who, when asked what name he wanted his phone listed under, said Willie Nelson. It seems that he had always admired the singer and thought this would be a kind of tribute to the singer. He also thought it would be fun to call up friends and they could see that he was calling from the home of Willie Nelson.

So he chooses the name and before too long a new set of phone directories comes out. And then he starts getting the calls. Women telling Willie they love him, inmates calling collect from the county jail, fans who have met him on the road, people wanting him to help them publish their song.

The young man finds himself enjoying this. He saves the calls; the whole thing is good for a laugh. He suddenly feels like he is part of Willie’s life. And then one day he gets a call from a man who sounds desperate. The man’s name is Kenny and he tells Willie that his mother is dying of liver disease and that his wife died of liver disease a few months earlier, and now he is calling Willie to see what, if anything, could be done. He says he wants to see if there is any way to minister to his mother.

The man’s voice sounds a little desperate, and he beseeches Willie to call him. Now putting Willie Nelson’s name on the phone doesn’t seem like it was a bright idea. One of the young man’s friends calls Kenny and tells him that in fact, he didn’t call the real Willie Nelson, but someone else. He is a little surprised and embarrassed, but in the end, he says he is not angry.

The friend asks him what he expected from Willie Nelson. He says he hoped he would call back, that if there was any chance of finding help, he needed to try it. He was probably hoping that Willie might come and visit his mother and sing her a song. He says that for her, it would have been one of the great moments of her life. And in the end he says that it was probably crazy to call, but even so, it did him some good. He said that the call filled up a bad evening for him and probably allowed him to get a good night’s sleep. In the end, just reaching out gave him some peace.

I’ve thought about that story since I heard it. Isn’t that how it is in life sometimes? How we really don’t know what else to do and we reach out anywhere we can think of. We are forced to send our intentions somewhere outside of ourselves. When we are consumed with grief, when we are struggling with the helplessness of not knowing how to care for others, when we simply don’t know what else it is we can do. When we are full of gratitude and want to say thanks.

Prayer is perhaps a way of moving into what we face in life. It is a way of giving ourselves to what we might not understand. It is a way that we reach out, and in that reaching out discover that we are not alone. That in our pain we can reach out for something and in the reaching out find connection. It changes how it is we see any given situation.

It has been said that prayer doesn’t change the circumstances we find ourselves in, but it changes us and how we are with what is happening in our lives. And that, I think, is true. We come to see ourselves in some new way in relationship with the mystery. We come to an awareness that our intentions are connected to something larger outside of ourselves.

Writer Sharon Salzberg tells the story of being at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, also known as the Wailing Wall, considered to be one of the holiest sites in Judaism. The custom is to write a prayer on a piece of paper and place the paper in a crack in the wall.

Salzberg writes that she went one day and wrote down her prayers. She did not address them to some supreme being, but asked for loving kindness for her friends who were sick, for her friends who had parents dying, and so on, and then put the paper in the cracks in the wall.

She went back the next day and did not know if she would be able to find her paper in the wall. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people come and place intentions there every day. But she did find it and was very pleased.

She went back the next day to check again and this time she was not sure if her intention was on the wall or not. She left feeling a little disheartened.

The fourth day she went back and it was clear she was not going to be able to tell whether her paper was there or not. She had no idea what actually happened to her prayers.

She found herself fixated with the fact that she could not see her piece of paper. And then she had a realization. She looked at the hundreds of other pieces of paper up on the wall and she realized that it really didn’t matter if her prayer was still up there. Her prayer was part of all the prayers that were on the wall. In a moment, she understood that it didn’t matter what was up there as much as the fact that her prayer was part of a universal prayer.

What she figured out was that each intention expressed someone’s own version of the universal. On the wall were prayers for love and compassion, for peace and healing and hope. No matter what the particulars on each piece of paper, they actually all said much the same thing. As we are connected together, our prayers are connected together and we come to speak in a language that transcends boundaries.

Words of the Persian mystic Rumi:

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

On any given Sunday there are many prayers brought to this space. Prayers of healing, prayers for wisdom, prayers for peace, prayers for compassion, prayers of thankfulness. And we bring those prayers in our own words born out of our particular ways of being in relationship to the world.

Today we celebrate the going forth of our youth into the world. We celebrate as our children and youth mark another year in their growth and development. Along with our good wishes come prayers that their lives will be full and happy, that they will bring their gifts to serve something larger.

As our children and youth mark this time in their lives, we are reminded in all the chapters of our lives there is meaning and there are ways we are connected to this mystery. And while our paths may seem different, they are also very much the same.

We ask that the spirit might guide our feet as we move along, that we might find what it is we need to find. That we not so much change the situation we are in, but that we change the way we are in the situation.

In all of our days may this search be sacred. May it ground us. May it hold us in whatever way it is we pray. Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of life, may we always find ways to give voice to our deepest longings, our deepest fears. May you always be with us in all of our days. May the awareness that we are not alone fill us with peace. Amen.

May all of your prayers help bring you to a place of hope and understanding. May they bring you to an awareness that you are held in love. Go now in peace. Amen.

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Copyright 2001, Rev. Thomas Disrud.  All rights reserved.