by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given September 22, 2002

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

OPENING WORDS

Good morning!

Let us look to this day,

To the beauty of the day itself,

To the love which surrounds us,

To the faith that gives us comfort

and keeps hope ever alive within us.

Come, let us worship together.

Henry David Thoreau, 19^th century transcendentalist, tried an experiment. He decided to move to the woods, out of town—not out of easy walking distance to Emerson’s, where he could count on a good meal from time to time—but out of Concord, where he could, as he wrote, "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life," as he said, "and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

He went on to write, "How worn and dusty, then, <are> the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity. I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now."

Brave words, noble words. But of course Thoreau did not have a wife—or children—or a mortgage—or a job. When he got thrown in jail for civil disobedience, Emerson had to bail him out. Thoreau was a prophet, not a householder. So should we dismiss him? Say he just doesn’t know what the real world is about? At our peril. For perhaps he did know the dimensions of a deeper reality that most of us wish to know, than most of us can bear to know.

But haven’t we always known that all of life is change? Haven’t we observed this as we ourselves, with the coming of fall, as we rake the leaves in our yard, as we have one birthday after the next after the next? A Buddhist Master commented, "Sometimes when I teach these things a person will come up to me afterward and say: ‘All this seems so obvious! Tell me something new.’ I say to this one: ‘Have you actually understood, and realized, the truth of impermanence?’ Ask yourself these two questions: Do I remember at every moment that I am dying, and everyone and everything else is, and so treat all beings at all times with compassion? Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoted every second to the pursuit of enlightenment?"

Sometimes we can feel a change coming on. At least that’s the way it works in my life. I’ll begin to feel uneasy, sometimes irritable, sometimes outright angry. Something needs to change. They say, you know, that the most dangerous time to be around a poisonous snake is when it’s shedding its skin—it can’t see well, it’s disoriented, and likely to strike. But at the same time that we may find ourselves needing to change, we find change difficult—even when the change is positive: a promotion, an inheritance, a new love. Why is letting go so hard? Some part of us is holding on to the old ways—they have become comfortable, even the pain, in some strange way, has become comfortable.

As a young woman, I lived in England for two years, and my husband and I would try to get down to Stratford-on-Avon as much as possible to see Shakespearean plays. We always stayed in a 16^th century bed and breakfast owned by a Mrs. Findley, an elderly widow. And always, always, Mrs. Findley burned the breakfast toast. Why, I wondered. Then one day she confessed that she had had a toaster years ago that was broken and burned the toast. She got used to the taste, and as she explained to us, "And now I like it burned—it’s much better that way, don’t you think?"

We fight change any number of ways. There is the geographical solution. "If only I lived in X instead of Y, I’d be happy." Then we move to X, and we find out that we’ve taken ourselves along. There is the new partner solution. The new partner solution often hits men when they realize that their youth has drifted away, and they are convinced that a younger partner would enliven them. But to any relationship, we bring who we are—without internal searching and change, we will fall into the same patterns that made the first relationship fail.

When the marriage or partnership of an affluent couple is in trouble, you often see the "build-a-dream-house" solution—it consumes a lot of time and attention and diverts them from the discovery that if they don’t like each other in the old house, they won’t like each other in the new house. For less affluent couples, there is the re-decorate-the-living-room solution, but in no time at all, they discover that their problems do indeed go deeper than the color and shape of the sofa. There is the cosmically bad solution of having a baby, a potential 18-year-long distraction, but one that puts enormous strain on an already unsound relationship.

Why all this running from the internal changes that are pushing at us, waiting to give us new life and renewal of spirit? William Bridges in his book Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes reminds us that with every change there is loss. To a greater extent than we realize, we become identified with and even defined by the roles and relationships in our lives. A woman is struggling through a divorce. She says to her support group, "You don’t understand! I always saw myself through Jack’s eyes, he was my mirror. I was a sexual being because he wanted me sexually. With our friends, I was part of a couple. I don’t know who I am any more. My mirror is gone."

Personally I engage change very reluctantly. I have made changes, yes, big changes, but I always feel I’ve been pushed from the back off a cliff. I identify with the title of the musical "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off." Can’t something in my life just stay the same? Can’t I just rest in what is for a while? The answer, which I’m reluctantly accepting, is no, not really. God, or something, has got me by the scruff of the neck, and unless I listen to the still, small voice, God gives me a good shake to make me pay attention. Some of us are just like that.

Reminds me of a story that comes out of Asia about a farmer who sees a tiger’s tail swishing between two large rocks. In a moment of haste, he grabs the tail and pulls. All of a sudden he realizes that he has an angry tiger by the tail and only two rocks stand between him and the tiger’s teeth! So there he remains, afraid to loosen his grip on the tail, lest he surely be killed.

A monk happens by and the farmer calls out in desperation, "Come over here and help me kill this tiger!" The holy man says, "Oh, no, I cannot do that. I cannot take the life of another." Then he goes on to deliver a sermon against killing. I can imagine the farmer rolling his eyes, all the while holding on tightly to the tail of an increasingly angry tiger.

When the monk finally finishes his sermon, the farmer pleads, "OK, if you won’t kill the tiger, then at least come hold its tail while I kill it." The monk thinks, "Well, perhaps that would be all right, to simply hold the tiger’s tail, so he grabs hold and pulls. The farmer, however, turns and walks away. The monk shouts after him, "Come back here and kill the tiger!" "Oh, no," the farmer replies. "You have converted me!"

Sometimes we just have to get a tiger by the tail to really change our perspective on things—to lose our sense of superiority, to gain a little humility.

A tiger by the tail. The husband walks out on us. A child is suddenly taken seriously ill. The pink slip comes as a surprise, after 23 years of work, and it simply says, "Your services are no longer needed. Please have your desk cleared out in 24 hours." All change is difficult, but transitions that we are unprepared for seem particularly hard. The ground beneath our feet seems to crumble. There is only one way to prepare for these difficult times—times that most of us will have at some point—and that way is to choose the ground that cannot be swept away. This is the ground of faith.

Life alone is continuous, ever emerging into new forms, so clinging to any form, however satisfying or beautiful, will make us suffer. Of course we do cling, we all cling, because we are human, and not fully enlightened beings, but what the Buddhists say is true: "Life is a bridge; therefore build no house on it." The spiritual journey is learning not to build houses on the bridge.

"Marilyn," you might say, "that’s a nice image, but let’s get down to brass tacks." OK, you’ve taken a hit from life. You’re wallowing in your pain and in your distrust of God and of people. You don’t believe in love anymore. Work has lost meaning. This part of the sermon is for you. Three principles of faith. Three truths about living when you find living is like wading through knee-high mud with no boots on.

The first principle comes out of a phone conversation I overheard the other day. A dad was talking to his son, encouraging him in his work, and the dad was saying, "Every success I’ve ever had is rooted in some kind of failure." Now this dad is a very successful man. I thought about these words and realized, grudgingly—because I hate to fail—I realized grudgingly, that these words were true.

I remembered the first writing class I ever took with Kentucky writer Wendell Berry. I took the class because I was depressed—I was married to a surgeon and had taken on the dubious role of being his support system, and I was the mother of a two-year-old and a baby. In short, I was emotionally and intellectually dying. I knew I could write—I mean, I had been an English major, hadn’t I? So I walked into Wendell’s class that day, like a lamb to the slaughter, thinking that I would be a real star and get lots of strokes, which had been sadly missing from my domestic life.

For the first paper, I turned in a long essay on examinations—basically, why I hated them and why teachers shouldn’t give them. Every word was spelled correctly, every punctuation mark in place, my points strongly made. When Wendell gave the papers back the next week, he had no marks on my paper—just one sentence, damning all my effort: it said, "Give me something of yourself." I looked at the paper in disbelief. I had always made A’s on papers! I started crying. Big, lonesome tears just kept coursing down my cheeks. I stammered, "I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to say," and I left the classroom.

Over the course of the semester, I handed in articles and book reviews, stuff I was publishing in the local newspaper, including a review of Wendell’s latest book—take that, Wendell!—all carefully researched, all reasoned and objective—but I could not do the one thing Wendell asked of me: "Give me something of yourself."

Finally the end of the semester came, and I knew the time had come. I stayed up all night typing an autobiographical essay on my old Remington portable. It was my story, and it was filled with as much truth as I could bring to it. It depicted a woman who was sad and angry and generous and mean-spirited and arrogant and brave and loving and lots of other human stuff. I finished the story with my older son Kash sitting on my lap. I got dressed and made ready to go, but the babysitter didn’t show up. What could I do? I had this overwhelming sense that I had to be in class that day. So I did something that I can hardly believe even today that I did. I dressed the babies in their snowsuits, put them in the back of the red Volvo station wagon, and drove to the hospital where their father was doing surgery. I took them up to the fourth floor and said to the nurses, "Dr. Sewell is going to have to look after his children today."

Now I want to explain that this action was and is totally unlike me. I am a good girl. A responsible girl. Always was. Still am. But I had to be in class that day.

The class gathered, and Wendell asked if anyone wanted to read. He turned to me, right there on his left, where I always sat. I demurred, saying, "Oh, I don’t know." He went all around the circle, but it was exam time, and nobody had anything to share. So he said, "OK, we’ll try again. Marilyn, do you want to read?" So I reluctantly agreed. I read, without once looking up, the whole 19 pages, through my tears. When I finished, I threw the paper at him, saying, "Here—here’s what you wanted." And when I looked up, the whole class was crying, too. Even Wendell had the hint of tears in his eyes. But he just said, "Don’t let yourself think of this as finished." And I haven’t. Words have become my calling.

A second principle about faith. New beginnings come when you least expect them. Don’t push the river. Yes, do the practical things you need to do—apply for the job, eat your vegetables, go to the party instead of stewing at home—but new beginnings seem to rise up more by serendipity than by goals and plans and action. Jobs, lovers, new ways of being emerge from an openness to life, not by our making demands on life. The poet Rilke puts it so beautifully:

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart

And try to love the questions themselves . . .

Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now,

Because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually,

Without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

The third principle of faith is closely related to the second: be patient, for God’s time line is not always our time line. An elderly woman told me a lovely story once. She said she had married twice, both men of wealth. She was never in love with either man, though, and when the second husband died after a long illness, she determined that love of a man was just not something she would experience. Then a great tragedy entered her life. Her son was diagnosed with a cancer, and he died six weeks later. Such grief pierced this woman’s being that she no longer wished to live. She was in her eighties, and felt her life was over. It was then that it happened. Her heart was open in a way it had never before been open. She fell in love—suddenly, deeply in love with a man a few years younger than she, a man who adored her. And they began a passionate, erotic partnership, and they lived, in their own way, happily ever after—though ever after was only two brief years until her own death came.

What! I’m saying to myself, what! I’m supposed to wait until I’m 86 for my own true love to come along? Maybe. What if it never happens? What if our plans and dreams and schemes just don’t fly? Maybe they’re not the right dreams. Maybe the questions we’re asking the universe are not large enough questions. What I’m finding in my own life is that the only really valid questions are, "Whom do I serve?" and "What comes next?" When I focus here, everything else falls into place.

The purpose of life is to grow in truth and grace, and to be faithful. It is not to be successful, in the world’s sense of that word, for that kind of success will serve to feed a voracious ego that can never be satisfied. The purpose of life is not to avoid suffering, for running from your garden-variety human suffering is at the heart of neurosis, and breeds unhappiness. The purpose of life is not to extend life for as long as you can, for you will not live forever, no matter how many bran muffins you eat and no matter how many miles you log on the treadmill.

The purpose of life is to ride the wave, to balance, to live it all, all that life is. Know that you will be led—if you are willing—by a golden thread that will take you always where you need to go. Listen, and wait, be patient and be present along the journey. It really is that simple. If you don’t believe me, just let go, and see. So be it. Amen.

PRAYER

Great Mystery, we are beset with change. Understand, we pray, how hard this is for us, and give us comfort and the assurance of your presence. Help us to have the courage to grieve the old, to open our eyes to the new, and to be truly present to this life we have been given. Help us to find the faith we need when we are shaken by the winds of fate, that we might see through our fears to the place where you are leading, to the new life that beckons to us. Amen.

BENEDICTION

Go, now, and be not afraid. Trust, and you will find your way. Go in love and go in peace.

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Copyright 2002, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.