by Rev. Thomas Disrud

A sermon given September 15, 2002

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

The question of time, what it is and what it means in our lives, is perhaps one of the great existential questions we face. How is it that we move through time? Where have we been and where is it we are going? What do we do with our time? The answers to these questions don’t come easily—they may not come at all. One of the things that we do learn is that our perspectives change with time and experience.

As I turn 40, I am particularly aware of how perspective changes with age. I remember being a child and thinking how old 20 seemed, let alone 40. Now it doesn’t quite seem that old at all. It all depends on your vantage point. A friend of mine wrote me an e-mail last week and at the end of it she said—remember, 40 is the new 20.

I’m not so sure about that, but I have come to know that age is relative. I’ve learned from being in this congregation that numerical age is one thing—and the age we are in spirit can be quite another thing. Some of the youngest people I have ever met have been the ones with some of the whitest hair. As the years go by, this mystery only grows, and maybe that is exactly how it should be.

So this issue of time and its meaning. I’ve most always thought of time as moving in a line. One event follows another event, one year follows another, and so it goes. That does happen in life, but I’m not so sure it always happens in as neat a way as we think, at least not when memory and perspective come into play. More and more, I’ve come to see that life has a certain circularity. As the linear years go by, there is a perspective that comes with those years and what has already been. But one event is not like all other events. Over time things take on different weights.

And then there is also the way that sometimes the past doesn’t seem to enter into the picture. We can keep making the same mistake over and over again as if we don’t remember it from the first time. Other times, it takes just one lesson. It is not always as clean as I might like to make it. And it is something that is very personal. Ever go through an experience with someone only to find out later how different their perspective was or how they may not remember it at all when it was so important for you? We can’t know how we will see things in the future.

Last week I had a dream. I was at a party being held in my honor and it was at a Goodwill store. There we were, a group of us were sitting at a table right in the middle of the store. The table looked like it was straight out of the early 1970s—it had the oval shaped Formica top with the matching flowered vinyl chairs. We were sitting there ready for the party to begin as the other people in the store went about their business.

I went outside—there was a line of people from my present life. They were there patiently waiting to come in. Finally at the end of the line, I looked over and saw two women I went to high school with coming along as well. They were not particularly close friends from high school; in fact, I can say with some certainty that I’ve hardly thought about them at all in the last 20 years. But in the dream they had not aged at all since the time we went to school together. They were just as I remembered them. There they were, all smiles, coming up to join in my party.

I was telling someone about this and she said, "well obviously the dream was about good will." That is probably true. I’m not sure what the rest of the dream was about, but the feeling of good will was certainly there. The other emotion that came with the dream was a sense of peace. Everyone was there together and it was good. I know it had something to do with parts of my life being together. It has made me think of those years this past week and that has been good. It has made me think about being in high school and what that time meant for me.

High school was not the greatest time in my life. It was not awful, but it certainly was not the best. I was not an athlete, so I didn’t quite fit into that crowd. My high school was too small to have much of an artsy crowd, and I can’t remember anyone who wore black all the time. But I did have some caring teachers. I found my way through studies and drama and forensics—they were very important to me. I found my way through. And when high school was over, I got out of there as fast as I could and I have never really looked back.

But over the years, I have come to see that there was much good that happened in my life in those years. I have come to see that there is plenty to look back on. At the time it was hard to see that. At the time I mainly wanted to get out of town. But with the perspective of time, I can see that despite the limitations, the small community where I grew up was a good place to grow up. I was safe and had plenty of opportunities go learn and grow. I certainly had lots of lessons in how communities work. But we all have our particular ways of looking back and bringing the past into our future. A few months ago, I had coffee with a high school classmate who has moved to the Portland area and I was struck by how much she knew about where people in our high school were now. I realized that I have not kept up with people at all. But that was not the case for her. It seemed that we had each carried that time into the future in a different way. Knowing what to bring forward and knowing what to leave behind is a balance we all need to find.

I have come to appreciate that the past—whether we are conscious of it or not—connects with the present in so many ways. We circle back to those memories and we come to know how formative they really are. And sometimes we may not realize the power those old connections can have.

I had a conversation with a retired woman a few days ago. She was telling me about how she went to prep school as a teenager. This was an academically challenging prep school and the studies were hard for many of her peers. But she did fine with the studies. Where she struggled was in physical education class. She was not quite as coordinated as some of her classmates and this made the class hard for her. And what made the situation even worse was the fact that her teacher was not at all sympathetic. She didn’t seem to understand why this would be hard for anyone. It was not a good situation.

Well, fast forward about 50 years. The woman made it thorough prep school, including phys. ed. class, and went on to have a good life with a career and children and grandchildren. She was at a conference on spiritual awakening and she saw a familiar face. It is her old phys. ed. teacher. As the former student went up to her old teacher, she found that she almost immediately burst into tears. "Where did that come from?" she asked herself. She was shocked at the old hurts that were triggered by that encounter, even if it happened many years earlier and after she thought she had done her work around the issue. It was something she thought she had forgotten about years before, but it was clear to her in that encounter that she had not. There was tremendous power in that encounter. She noted with a slight twinkle in her eye that the phys. ed. teacher was not doing do well in life and that in fact she was anything but happy. I sensed that for her student, this also helped her put the past into a newly revised perspective.

We cannot know what turns our lives will take. Just when we might think we know how it will be, we find out that we don’t know much of anything. What I have learned is that with time, life reveals itself. We are always in the process of becoming. We are always coming to be the people we are supposed to be. We circle round and round and over time we can see things that we were not able to see, even if they have been there all along.

With time we come to understand the old wounds and how deep those wounds go. We come to understand the hurts we have done to others. We come to appreciate the gifts we have been given. We come to see how what was once a hurt has brought us to a place that we would not have gotten to without that hurt. We come to see how complex life can really be. With time it can be more difficult to find our way past those old hurts. Maybe it is better to just leave them where they are, we tell ourselves.

But there is a way that things come up when they are going to come up. Maybe they just come up when we are ready for them. I’m not sure. But something does happen. We get to a point and it is time. We may be more able to forgive ourselves or others. We may be better able to see the systems we are a part of and how those systems were or were not good for us. With time, hopefully, we can see ourselves from a place of wholeness and from that place work on the places of brokenness in ourselves and those times when, out of our own brokenness, we have harmed others.

Time, says the poet, wants to show you a different country, it’s the one that your life conceals, the one waiting outside when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at in her crochet design, the one almost found over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.

We are presently in the high holy days of the Jewish tradition. They begin with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. It is a time a celebration as a new year begins. It is a time of joy and fireworks. But then comes Yom Kippur, which begins at sundown this evening. It is a turning back and looking at the past year. It is a turning towards god to look at our lives and what has been in the last year. These are the days of atonement, to reflect of where we have been, how we have hurt others, how it is we want to turn. How it is we hope to begin again.

This is not easy work, but there is tremendous power in this work. This is time that is ripe. There is power in stopping and looking at our lives and seeing them with some perspective. Too often we don’t take the time to stop and look at where we are.

These are days of reflection about our lives. These days also bring with them responsibility. They call us to live. They call us to be engaged in the world that we want to see. They call us to make amends where we need to. They call us to forgive ourselves and others and begin again in love. On this day of atonement we look at the year that has been and what it has meant. We are one with God and called to make the turns that we need to make.

Much can happen in the course of a year—in our lives and in our world. Our world is a very different place this year that it was a year ago. I was amazed at all of the events last Wednesday to mark Sept. 11 and the media spectacle. The first anniversary was a very important milestone to mark, but I have to say that by the time the day arrived I didn’t quite know what to do about it. By the time it got here, I had tuned out too much of it because of all the hype.

I came to realize that inevitable commercialization in our culture when I arrived down at Pioneer Square around 6:45 last Wednesday morning to take part in an interfaith service and some of the first people I saw were the Starbucks workers with big tanks of coffee strapped to their backs, serving coffee. They looked a little like space aliens to me until I figured out what they were doing. On this day of remembrance, it was also important to be able to get the Starbucks hit.

There are many lessons to come from last September. There are stories that have moved us—many I hope we will not forget. But I fear that we really haven’t learned many lessons from it at all. I fear instead that one act of violence is simply going to beget another act of violence, maybe more deadly than we can imagine. I fear that we really haven’t learned many lessons and that we will be more aware of that next September or ten Septembers from now.

Where any of our lives will be in the future we cannot know. But part of what we do is to look around. Part of what we do is to pay attention to what we know and what we can see. It is important to remember that our lives are not isolated lives, but part of a continuity of life. This is part of how we make sense of things. We see our lives year after year, we see the good things that come our way, the things we do, and also the ways we miss the mark. We see this in our world as well. We see again the ways we want to be in right relationship with ourselves, with other people, with what is greater than us, what we might call God. And we see how we are part of a struggle and quest that others have been on before and that others will be on well into the future.

I once heard the story of a man whose daughter was killed in a car accident. For him it was the most devastating loss of his life. He did not know how he would ever make sense of it. He did not know where to turn. He questioned his faith and he questioned the meaning of his life. After some time, he said he came to know that he may never know what this had meant. But he did come to a place where he could say that somewhere down the road, maybe in his life, maybe not in his life, that the full meaning of this would be revealed. For him it was the knowledge that someday, somehow, he would be able to see some larger meaning of how this was to fit into the larger scheme of things. It was an act of faith for him that somehow this would come to be.

And sometimes in our lives it simply comes down to a matter of faith. It comes down to believing that there will be meaning reveled somehow, somewhere. It comes down to a knowing that we can’t possibly have all the answers, but trust in that knowing.

I remember a conversation with a woman once who had lost her husband of many years just a few months earlier. As a couple they were very, very close. They did everything together, and his death was devastating for her. When I would go to visit her, she would usually ask me, "Will the pain go away?" My answer to her was, no, the pain does not go away; I’m not sure that it ever completely goes away. But I told her I thought that it did get easier with time. As time goes on, there is a little more perspective, there is a little less hurt. And you are changed because you have had the chance to know this person. Your life is different and your life goes on.

One of the things I have learned in my life is that the faith I have is sustained in the community where I serve. In the people I am with, in the lives I have a chance to witness, there is a power in seeing the generations. There is a power in seeing people who are 20 years younger or 20 or 40 years older. There is a tremendous power that comes with the knowledge that their lives have been filled with all kinds of hardships and tragedy. There is power in seeing the wisdom that comes out of living. And there is also power in seeing the people who are coming along after me; I’m always amazed at the wisdom I and all they seem to know about the world.

Last week, I received an e-mail from a 9-year-old named India Miller. India grew up in this church until she moved to California with her family so her mother could attend seminary there. When I first met India she was two or three years old and was pretty focused on fashion. In her e-mail she was concerned about the current state of the world and wanted me to write to the President and lawmakers if I shared her concern. This is the letter she wrote to the President:

Dear Mr. President, sir,

My friends and relatives and I really don't want you to have a war against Iraq. Why do we have to keep on having war against other countries? What reason do we have to be big bullies to them? They're so poor and we're so rich. We're acting really snotty to them. Let's be friends instead of enemies.

You are my President. I want us to build schools and houses for them and give them money for food and clothes. Peace comes from sharing and giving, so we should share and give to them.

Yours sincerely,
India Miller
A citizen of the USA
Age 9

Our lives move through time. Generations come and go. We come to know the places where we circle back, we come to know the places that are touchstones for us. We come to know those places where we miss the mark and where we might continue to miss the mark. But we also come to those places where we are supposed to be—those places that help us point to the place where we need to go.

The mystery might be reveled in a glimpse only to become mystery once again. We come to know who it is we are and what the life is we are supposed to lead. We have our hurts and we have the many graces that come our way. One year moves into another and we are asked to live the life that we are supposed to live. We come to see the people we want to become. We see ourselves always unfolding.

I’m reminded over and over again by the poet and by others that time offers this gift in its millions of ways, turning the world, moving the air, calling, every morning, "Here, take it, it’s yours."

PRAYER

Great Spirit, we give thanks for all that is our life. In all of our days, hold us. Through all of the wonders and tragedies of life, hold us. Help us to know that we are precious in your sight. Help us to see our lives as fully as we can and help us to bring our voices into the world, that we might love mercy, and do justice and walk humbly with you in all of our days. Amen.

BENEDICTION

Life your life and live it fully. Through all of your days, keep the faith. Go in love and go in peace. Amen.

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Copyright 2002, Rev. Thomas Disrud.  All rights reserved.