by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given December 8, 2002

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

OPENING WORDS

Look to this day!

Today, well lived, makes every yesterday

A path to the Holy,

And every tomorrow,

A vision of hope.

Come, let us worship together.

I have a confession to make. I’m not a nature lover. I know that’s the wrong thing to say when you live in the Northwest—I know that many people move here because of the beauty of the natural world and their relationship with place. In fact, any time I meet a new person here in Oregon, the questions begin: "Do you hike? Do you cycle? Do you ski?" I tried to hike, and I injured my foot—badly. I got a bicycle—brand new—and all the accessories, and I crashed three times, and bloodied myself. I tried to ski once and was doing pretty well until I fell off the ski lift and was pulled back from the abyss by one stronger and more adept than I. I’m from the South, you see, and Southern women just don’t do these things. Our talents and predilections are other. Why does no one ask if I can make a cherry pie? Or, for that matter, a squirrel stew?

Nevertheless, even though I am not a "nature" person, I am amazed by the grandeur of the trees here in the Northwest. And there is a ritual which I undertake every Sunday morning before I preach. I rise early—only because I have to—but then I go out on my front porch and I look at the sun coming up behind two big-leaf maples that stand like sentinels on either side of my home. They are old, old trees—one of them has a hole in the trunk big enough for a small child to hide inside. I’m nervous about preaching—I always am. But when I see the light arriving through those ancient branches, I feel myself relaxing, I know all is well. I realize that these trees have been here a lot longer than I have. I know that the earth will move on, in all its splendor, long after I am gone. And I have this deep feeling that "gone" has no meaning, really. My body will be gone, but I—my essence, that is—can never be gone. These trees speak to me of eternity. So I come to you this morning, just as I am, frail and imperfect in body and soul, but full of light.

We move toward the light—our language, our common expressions, move us there. We say, "She is the light of my life." We say, "The light of the Spirit." We say, "Seeing the light of day." And on and on. It is significant that various religious traditions have rituals of light this time of year. There is of course in the Christian tradition the light of the star; those of the Jewish faith light the menorah; the celebration of light in the Hindu religion is called Divali; Kwanzaa is a celebration of African culture and community in which the seven candles of kinara are lit. The Winter Solstice is celebrated by many who are more earth-centered in their religious life, and that is the time of the turning of the darkness toward the light.

The darkness represents the fallow period when the light is hidden away. It is the promise, like the coming of the babe at Christmas, that light will come again, will come out of the very darkness—but this is the tricky part. The darkness in our culture is too often pushed away, but it is the darkness that gives way to light, and then light, to darkness. It is the way of the world, the rhythm of nature. It is the way of our own living. We must learn to praise the darkness as well as the light.

I find that saying this is much easier than doing it. In one sense, I am addicted to darkness—or at least to the night. I stay up as late as possible, hoping not to miss out on anything, loving the solitude. The light of the morning is at best irritating to me. When I wake up, I do so reluctantly, covering my head to shut out the light just a few more precious minutes. Too often I awaken to my demons—worries, memories that will not go away, hurts that I can’t seem to get over. Getting up means being conscious of all this, and that’s the last thing I want to do. But then something changes. I do my exercise, I do my spiritual practice, I make breakfast, and I am underway. I am interacting with people, or I am creating, and I am pulled out of myself, out of the darkness and into—well, at least more of the light. I tend to want to stay there, to run away from the darkness that disturbs, to distract myself from it.

But when I am honest, I know that the light and the darkness are one, absolutely and irrevocably entwined. How have I learned the most profound lessons? Through pain and longing. From what source does my truest compassion flow? From depression and despair. From believing that nothing will ever change, that I will be miserable forever, and yet seeing how change comes, and hurt flows so easily into depth and caring, if I will but allow it. Yes, I am addicted to darkness—but I know it’s the only way to light. And I know that light will turn again to darkness, and I could not, would not, have it any other way.

I sat with one who is desperately ill this past week. He doesn’t know whether he will live or die, and he is in constant pain. I found myself weeping, stepping out of that detached thing that is called "role" in ministry, and simply loving this one who was hurting. Wanting to make it right. Being able only to be with him, in tears. Maybe, I thought, that was the best thing I could offer. Not advice, not even prayers, but just my tears.

Pema Chodren, a Buddhist nun whom I greatly admire, speaks of "feeding the ghost." Unreasonableness comes out of the blue, she says. Out of nowhere we suddenly feel sad. Or we’re furious, and we don’t know why—but we want to destroy something. In her tradition, we don’t try to push these feelings away, but we develop a relationship with them as a spiritual practice. She suggests that you have a ceremony in which you offer a torma—or a little cake—to these ghosts. You could even put it out each morning. That sudden unreasonableness that comes out of nowhere is called the don, she says—it wakes you up, and being with the don has the power to purify you.

Chodron tells of the methods of Gurdjieff, a spiritual teacher in the early part of the 20^th century. One of his main teachings was to be awake to the moment, to whatever was happening. He liked to, as Chodron said, "tighten the screws on his students." There was a man in the community of students who had a terrible temper. Nobody liked him. Every little thing would send him into a tantrum. He complained all the time, and the other students just wished he would go away. Gurdjieff liked to make his students do things that were absolutely meaningless, and one day about forty students were cutting up a lawn into small pieces and planting them elsewhere. This was too much for this angry fellow. He blew up and stormed out. People were so happy, thrilled, that at last he was gone. But when Gurdjieff heard what happened, he said, "Oh no!" and hurried after him in his car. Three days later they both came back. When one of the students was serving Gurdjieff’s supper, he asked, "Sir, why did you bring him back?" And Gurdjieff answered in a very low voice, "This is just between you and me—you must tell no one. I pay him to stay here."

We Unitarian Universalists are not easily led into the shadow side of our personalities. No, we try to talk ourselves out of these unreasonable feelings. If anything, we are a reasonable people. You know the old joke. A Unitarian Universalist dies and rises up toward the Pearly Gates. He comes to a sign pointing in two different directions: one says, "This Way to Heaven," and the other says, "This Way to a Discussion About Heaven." He, of course, follows the second path.

I remember the time when I was called to the home of a woman who told me that she needed spiritual guidance. She was highly intelligent, a very well-educated professional. After a few introductory pleasantries, she began to seek my advice about her search for deeper meaning. She had a stack of books about two feet high, as I remember, and she began asking me about various titles. "What do you think of this one?" "What about this author? Do you know his work?" I grew quiet. My answer surprised her, I think. I said, "The answers are not in these books. You have all the answers already. Put the books away and listen to the voice within." We must become listeners who have nothing to say.

It’s counter-intuitive to invite the demons into your consciousness, to even give them cakes—but that is the practice that will allow you to turn again to the light, knowing that the darkness led you there. Do not forsake the darkness, and the darkness will reward you richly. I know that with myself, when I try to escape the darkness—and I do—when I pray to be released, I may only be led deeper. The words of Jeremiah speak their truth. Jeremiah 13:16 reads: "When you look for light, he turns it into gloom,/ and makes it deep darkness." When I do a memorial service for someone, I always explicitly say that the individual is dead—not that "he has gone to a better place," or "she passed away," nor any of the other euphemisms, but rather, she is dead. That is the truth that must be registered, that must be taken in, before we can go on to celebrate that person’s life.

Parker Palmer, a Quaker educator, writes of the death of his father: "A few years ago, my father died. He was more than a good man, and the months following his death were a long, hard winter for me. But in the midst of that ice and loss, I came into a certain clarity that I lacked when he was alive. I saw something that had been concealed when the luxuriance of his love surrounded me—saw how I had relied on him to help me cushion life’s harder blows. When he could no longer do that, my first thought was, "Now I must do it for myself." But as time went on, I saw a deeper truth: it never was my father absorbing those blows but a larger and deeper grace that he taught me to rely on." The darkness of death took Palmer to the illumination of truth, lent him grace.

Writer Mary Gordon had a very different sort of father. She lost him when she was just seven years old. When her mother spoke the words, "Your father’s had a heart attack," and later when the hospital called and said that he was dead, she knew that everything she had known would come to an end. She adored her father, she idolized him, and since she did not know him, she made him into the father she wanted him to be.

When Mary Gordon became older, became a writer of some repute, she decided to find out just who her father was. For her, he was the shadow man, never revealing his true identity. She had, as she said, a hunger for the living man. But what she learned was profoundly disturbing. He was a Jew who was anti-Semitic. He was a writer, but when she found the crumbling magazines he had written for, she found that he was a pornographer. If only he had not been a writer, not leaving a trail. But she found him, and now what? Torn apart by the words he had written, she felt she should witness against him. At the same time, she wanted to run into his arms the way she had done as a child, her tearful face resting on his chest, feeling that place of safety. She wanted to abandon his words, to misplace them, she writes. But his words are part of who he was—they are a way of remembering. She made a resting place for him, in her own words. Both Parker Palmer and Mary Gordon lost their fathers—one a good man, the other not so good—but the both had to get past the loss, had to get past the image, to a resting place of truth.

In the darkness that envelopes us now, in the midst of a winter that chills us to the bone, our hearts may turn wintry, and we may think the wind and the cold will never stop. But the season will balance out, and spring will come again, and we will forget about the baby in the manger, the promise of light coming out of darkness, the strength and love which are awakened by a long, hard journey, by being turned away because there is no room.

Our yearning is the very force that draws us to the Holy, that makes the Holy necessary. When we look for God, God is in the look itself, is in the very thought of looking. What we look for has been with us from the beginning.

Do we want love at the very center of our lives? We say we do. Well then, we must treasure our longing, we must fall in love with love itself. We must find beauty in our yearning. But how can we bear it? In our reaching is our receiving. In our receiving is the love, the peace, we seek. So be it. Amen.

PRAYER

Great Mystery, we don’t understand why we are visited with troubles, with longings, and we want so much to be released. Help us to have the faith that we need for ordinary days. Truly there is "a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance." By your love, may we find the good in all the seasons of our lives.

BENEDICTION

As you go out into the cold, may your faith warm your spirit. Go in love, and go in peace this winter morn.

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