by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We come this day

To renew our faith in the goodness and beauty of life,

To reaffirm the way of the open heart, and

To rekindle the flame of memory and hope.

Come, let us worship together.

We parents and grandparents become a little anxious if a child isn’t walking or isn’t talking by the age that is generally expected. I know when I call my son and daughter-in-law and ask about my grandson, who will be two in April, I always say, "Well, has he said anything yet?" "Not really," they answer. "Just Mama and Dada." Surely he will talk soon, I think. I tried to teach him my name when I saw him last January—but that was a bit of a stretch. I would point to myself and say, "Mu Mu," which is what my kids call me. I did this over and over again, but now the kid is totally confused, because when I say, "Where is Mu Mu?" he looks at my chest and points directly at my breast. Clearly he thinks Mu Mu means breast. I think I’ll give it a rest.

Rachel Remen tells the story of her early speech development. She writes that she did not speak at all until she was almost three years old—at least, that is the family lore. It seems that she had been a terribly premature baby and had had a difficult birth, so the pediatrician had told her parents not to expect much from her. She might be late in speaking, the doctor said. Or she might never speak at all. They did everything possible to help her speak, pointing to objects and repeating their names slowly and carefully. Only her grandfather wasn’t worried. "Look into her eyes," he said. "She is there." Well, to everyone’s great relief, little Rachel said her first words at a Thanksgiving dinner just a few months before her third birthday. She turned to her mother halfway through dinner and said, "May I have the salt."

Remen says she has heard this story told many times over. But she had a secret: these were not her first words at all. Her first words were in Hebrew, taught to her by her grandfather. She says for countless generations, Orthodox Jews have taught these same six Hebrew words, the Sh’ma, to children as soon as they are able to speak. Translated into English, the words mean "Hear, O Israel, the Lord God, the Lord is One." The Sh’ma is also said in times of great danger and at the moment of death. When she was older, she asked her grandfather what the words really meant, and he answered, "To me these words have always meant that despite suffering, loss, and disappointment, life can be trusted."

She asked him why he had taught her these words when she was so little. He smiled and he told her that to choose to live as a person is hard on the soul, and takes great courage—sometimes souls who know this may delay their decision to be here. "Your birth was very difficult, Neshume-le," he said. "Because you were born so far ahead of time, I thought perhaps your soul may have been taken by surprise. When you were in the incubator, your soul wavered back and forth between staying and leaving. Afterward it was fearful and cautious, like a little bird. I thought your soul needed something to hang onto."

What a wise man! When we are vulnerable children, we need something to hang onto. When we are grown-ups and still more vulnerable than we would like to believe, we need something to hang onto. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord God, the Lord is One." All that is, is God.

Rachel Remen is lucky to have had someone like her grandfather in her life, someone of such emotional courage and religious faith. She says she shared many secrets with him, and I expect he told her stories, stories from the scripture and stories about her ancestors. From these stories we learn where we come from and therefore much about who we are and how we got to be that way. I grew up in the South with my paternal grandparents, and like most Southerners they were story tellers—so was my father, as were my aunts and uncles. My father told me about his grandmother and how she loved him. "She was the sweetest woman," he used to say, and he would tell about the time she gave him the rabbit foot for good luck and then he would pull it out of the bottom drawer of his chest of drawers and show it to us and stroke it with his thumb. We need something to hang onto.

Our children and grandchildren need our family stories—they need to imagine, which the spoken word demands of them, as opposed to the passivity that TV demands. During part of my sabbatical, I was working on a book addressed to young adults—young people at that awkward age when they are out of college, but not yet settled into a clear path of work, and not yet in a committed relationship. As part of my research for this book, I got together a group of young adults from our church and I asked them quite directly, "What is it you want from the older generation? What advice? What knowledge?" What they said they wanted, what was first on their list, really surprised me. They said, "We want the family stories. We want to know where we came from and who we are." Before the elders die, get their stories. Once they are gone, the stories are gone, part of our history is gone, and part of our deep knowing about who we are is gone. Do not leave their accounts unspoken.

When we go back to the past, the pieces begin to fall into place like a puzzle. All the pieces will not be there, yet images, themes will emerge. Sometimes we are surprised at how the past has been translated into our own lives. When my grandparents died, I was given my grandmother’s Bible, the one she read daily in her big overstuffed rocking chair. She would read aloud: "Bless the Lord O my soul; all that is within me, bless His holy name." She had seven children and 17 grandchildren—why was I the one who got the Bible, with her favorite passages marked in pencil, now one of my dearest possessions? Was that Bible always destined for me?

Rachel Remen spoke of the secrets she shared with her grandfather. She knew from the time she was tiny that his love for her was absolutely there; she knew that nothing she could do or say would make him withdraw his love. We need someone with whom we can share the most tender parts of ourselves, someone we know will never trample on that tenderness.

But there are other kinds of secrets, secrets that must be spoken and often are not—knowledge that is silenced by individuals, but more insidiously, by institutions. This past week I read in the newspaper about the sentencing of a priest who had been accused of abusing more than 130 children. He got 9 to 10 years in prison. But what about the hierarchy of the Catholic Church? What about the Cardinal? Over the years the practice has been to move an alleged abuser from one parish to the next, and let him continue with a new set of children.

In our own denomination, our history with race is often not told, and it should be. Mark Morrison Reed, an African American minister, has written a book entitled Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, and that volume gives an account that is not pretty. Also, it should be said that few of our 19^th century ministers were abolitionists—after all, the cotton mills of New England depended upon Southern cotton. Mostly these ministers preached "gradualism"—that is, yes, they thought slavery was a bad thing, but it would gradually change over the years. We wouldn’t want to do anything precipitous, like just taking other people’s property, which slaves were, and freeing them. Besides, they have always been cared for by the master, as the argument went, and they wouldn’t know what to do if they were suddenly set free. Channing, perhaps our most famous 19^th century Unitarian minister, was relieved of his pulpit for preaching a rather mild abolitionist sermon.

Let’s move to a more personal place now. I thought about my own experience with words unsaid. In my childhood, I had a whole backlog of words, of feeling words unspoken, words of fear, words of anger. These words were not allowed, and so I retreated inward to my books, to my imagination, to the hope I found in words that others wrote. I was actually depressed, I think, until I was in my 30’s and began getting therapy to recover that lost child, her unspoken words.

During the early part of my marriage, I had not as yet learned to speak of my needs—I didn’t know it was all right for me to have needs. I’m remembering the time I was about to give birth to my first baby. It was 30 years ago. My husband and I were living in Liverpool, England, where he was doing a pediatric surgery residency. When the labor pains began, he took me to the hospital, where I was prepped and then taken into a waiting room and left on a cot, alone. I looked around the sterile room, and I wished for friends and family, and I was afraid. My husband came into the room and he said to me, "Well, this is going to take all night, and I have to do rounds in the morning, so I’m going to go home and get some sleep." I couldn’t believe he was going to leave me! I just fell silent and nodded my head in acquiescence, but I said to myself, "Well, the baby and I, we can do this alone." At that very moment I felt a wall come down between my husband and me, a wall that never left. Five years later, without our ever having so much as an argument, I told him I didn’t want to be married to him. He was surprised. He said, "I think we have a wonderful marriage."

The words left unspoken—there were many in our marriage, not just my words, but his as well. Now I am a different woman—I’ve learned to speak of my needs, at least most of the time. I’ve learned to connect the words with what is going on inside. Now I would handle that same situation in a much different way. I’ve replayed the scene and thought how it would go. He would enter the room, and I would be lying there in my fear. He would say that he had to get some rest and make ready to go, and I would say, "You’re going to do what? You’re going to go home and go to sleep while I’m in labor here in a strange country having your baby? I don’t think so." If there was anything handy, I might throw it at him.

It’s so often men who do not speak of their need, for many men have learned somehow that it is not manly to have needs. I think of my brother-in-law Gary, a tall, handsome man in his fifties. He had been having some discomfort for several weeks, but would not consult a doctor. One weekend he went to a family reunion in S. Louisiana and woke up in the night with severe chest pain—but he did not want to wake everyone else up, so he went outside and walked around and around the house, for more than an hour. Finally the pain became so great that he decided he had to call an ambulance. He did, but it was too late. He died of a massive heart attack a few hours later.

Hear these words from poet Ruth Stone, from the end of her poem "Advice": "Dear children, you must try to say/ Something when you are in need./ Don’t confuse hunger with greed;/ And don’t wait until you are dead."

Sometimes saying the words, the true words in your heart, will bring you what you need, will in fact shift your heart or the heart of another. Sometimes those words are best shared, sometimes maybe not, but the words must not be left unsaid—they must be given life. I want to share with you the ending of a moving short story by Richard Bausch. The story is given in the first person, as a letter that a 70-year-old man is writing to his wife in the middle of the night, for his estrangement from her has made him too restless to sleep. As he writes, he goes from a place of anger and despair to a place of sweetness and memory:

. . . over the course of this night, I came to the end of needing an explanation for our difficulty. . . . . Everything we say seems rather aggravatingly mindless and automatic, like something one stranger might say to another . . . . Darling, we go so long these days without having anything at all to do with each other, and the children are arriving tomorrow, and once more we’ll be in the position of making all the gestures that give them back their parents as they think their parents are, and what I wanted to say to you, what came to me when I thought about Cousin Louise and Charles when they were young and so obviously glad of each other . . . what came to me was that even the harsh things that happened to them, even the years of anger and silence . . . must have been worth it for such loveliness. At least I am here, at seventy years old, hoping so. Tonight, I went back to our room again and stood gazing at you asleep, . . . and I had a moment of thinking how we were always friends, too. Because what I wanted finally to say was that I remember well our own sweet times, our own old loveliness, and I would like to think that even if at the very beginning of our lives together I had somehow been shown that we would end up here, with this longing to be away from each other, this feeling of being trapped together—I would have known enough to accept it all freely for the chance at that love. And if I could, I would do it all over again, Marie. All of it, even the sorrow. My sweet, my dear adversary. For everything that I remember.

Why is it so hard to speak to another of our affection, to say, "I love you"? Maybe it will make us sound sentimental. Maybe those tender words will be misunderstood. Yeah. And maybe those words will be like water to a parched plant. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve been preparing a memorial service for the parent of grown children and had one of them say, with eyes full of tears, "You know, he never said, ‘I love you.’" Or "She never hugged us kids—she just wasn’t affectionate that way."

It is true that "I love you" is often said with a good deal of expectation. "I love you—do you love me?" Or perhaps to children, "I love you," with the unspoken subtext, "and of course you’ll make all A’s at school." Actually those very precious words need to be said with no expectation at all. Just "I love you" and let it go. I find myself saying these words more often now than ever before, and I really don’t care if they’re misunderstood. I say them to my kids over and over again. I say them to good friends. I say them to Tom and to Mark. I just say "I love you" when it’s there in me to say and it’s just wanting out.

Last weekend I led a Soul Retreat, and as part of that retreat, we had a kind of question-answer session in which I answered written questions. Some of the questions were theological—you know, easy ones like "What happens after death?" And some were more personal. "Do you have a partner?" No. "Do you have children?" Yes, two sons. "What do you do for fun?" Go to the movies and eat lots of movie popcorn full of chemicals and laden with fat. One person wrote, "When you came back from your sabbatical, did you find that you wanted to move in a different direction, or did you find that you wanted to stay here as our minister?" The individual went on to write, "This is a loaded question. You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to."

Well, I want to, and I want to answer it to all of you. I came back to the church on September 4, not knowing how I really would feel—after all, I had been away for 8 months. A week later came September 11, and I knew without a doubt how I felt about being your minister. When the terrorist attacks came, I felt so bonded to you, so totally there with you. There was no question that I was your minister, and you were my people. I felt enormous love for you. I wanted to protect you from all the pain you were feeling. My call is still here, very much so. What I’m saying is that you have my heart. And that love is the grounding out of which my ministry is done.

Speak the words that must be spoken, my friends, for the truth really does set us free. Take care to speak the secrets that need to be spoken aloud, for the truth really does set us free. Hear this wisdom from the Gnostic Gospels: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." Insist that our institutions of government, business, education, and religion speak truth and not hide behind convenient lies. Tell the family stories before it is too late. And in your personal relationships, don’t hide what is hurting. Say the words that must be said, and trust that healing will come. And finally, when you have a heart brimming over with love, let that love just spill out into the world, and never count the cost.

So be it. Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we know that words can hurt and words can give life. We pray today that we might have the wisdom to choose our words well, and the courage to speak truth to power. Let us know today the depth of our love, the preciousness of friendship, and the cleansing nature of truth. Let us never leave unsaid words that might heal a hurt or words that might give another the sweetness of knowing our love for them. Amen.

BENEDICTION

Go now and know that you are held in the arms of this community of faith. Go in love and go in peace. Amen.

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