by Rev. Thomas Disrud

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

Life does not always take us where we expect it to take us.

It was one of those conversations at the time that didn’t seem to mean a whole lot, but when I look back on it, it was a pretty important conversation. I was beginning my second year of seminary. At the time I wasn’t sure of much, but the one thing that I thought I was clear on was that I wouldn’t go into parish ministry. My calling, I was pretty sure, was to be a chaplain somewhere.

I had a friend in seminary who had just returned from a summer ministry up in Portland. I didn’t know much of anything about the Portland church at the time—other than that it was growing and was considered the hot church in the movement.

So I was talking to my friend Amanda Aikman and she was telling me about what an amazing church this was. And then she said, “And by the way, they are going to be looking for a second minister in a couple years and you should keep it in mind. I have a sense that you and Marilyn Sewell would make a really good team.”

Interesting, I thought. I put this away somewhere but really didn’t pay all that much attention. After all, the one thing that I was pretty sure about was that I wasn’t going into the parish ministry. Next there was the parish internship that I kind of stumbled into, there was the search packet that got lost in the mail and missed the deadline. There was the process of falling in love with the church. And here we are ten years later.

Life does not always take us where we expect it to take us.

It was funny how these things went. By the time I actually got here, there was a sense that I was meant to be here all along. Looking back I can see that I mainly needed to get out of the way and let the spirit do its work.

And so often, that is true in life. And certainly it is true in ministry.

I’m not sure what to make of being here for 10 years. One of my main thoughts the past few weeks is that I must have been really young when I was called here in 1995. The time has gone by incredibly fast. I have considerably more gray hair. The learning curve has been steeper than I could have ever imagined. And had I known some of the growth experiences I would have, I not sure I would have ventured here in the first place.

I have an overwhelming sense of gratitude for being here. That is the first and foremost thing that I have come to know about ministry. It is certainly not easy work, and sometimes awful work, but most of all I’m filled with a sense of privilege. Ministers are allowed into people’s lives at precious and miraculous times—in a hospital room, in the conversation that happens with a family to plan a memorial service, at times in the receiving line when what has been held inside comes spilling out.

I’m humbled as I come to know your stories. I look out on Sundays and think about all that people carry with them and I am amazed that they are able to get out of bed in the morning. But the good news is that so often they do. They not only get out of bed in the morning but they come here and sing, they come here with children in tow, they come here to make coffee and do all kinds of things. And yes, something does get us out of bed in the morning. We show up even when it seems almost impossible that we could do that.

Life does not always take us where we expect it to take us.

There are other parts of ministry that are not as easy. It is hardly ever okay for a minister to get angry. Most of the time is it not even okay to raise your voice. In that moment when you do you can see that it has been received as some combination of parent and God and teacher all coming down on you all at once. And you see the power that can come with the office.

Ministers get put on pedestals—big, tall pedestals—and the taller the pedestal the longer the fall. Ministers are giant projections screens onto which our best and our worst traits can be seen. There is a sense of life being lived under a magnifying glass sometimes and that focuses plenty of heat.

People have a way of attributing great wisdom to you as a minister, whether you have said something wise or not. What I’ve learned is that people tend to hear what they need to hear. Every minister will tell you they have had the experience of someone coming up to them after a sermon and saying: when you said such and such… it changed my life… and you are standing there and thinking… but I didn’t say that. Most of the time you don’t say anything because you know that they got something that they needed and it doesn’t really have much to do with you. Sometimes it is my job to smile and let it go. There is an element of grace involved.

And in that moment you realize again that life does not always take you where you expect it to take you.

Most of the time I have learned that my job is to try to get out of the way and let the spirit do its work. One of the good things in this work is that I learn over and over again that it really isn’t about me. It is about something much larger and I may not always know what that something larger is.

This brings me to a certain paradox when I think about being here for ten years. I know that I know more today than I did then. But I am also more aware of all that I don’t know. One of the things that ministry has taught me is that more and more often it really does come down to this overwhelming sense of mystery. There is just so much we don’t know.

This is a hard one for us Unitarian Universalists. Living with our unknowing is just not something we are very good at. I think it has something to do with the challenge of giving up control. 

We are people who want answers. We are smart. We are logical. If we just study it hard enough we will figure it out. We want that feeling of control in our lives. And then, probably just about every day, we learn that we are not in control. Giving up that illusion is one of the great challenges that we face. And that is often a lesson that we have to keep learning over and over again. And that is okay.

We keep trying to understand how it is we are to live in the world. We try to figure out how we fit into the context of things. We try to figure out what it all means. This is our lesson plan day after day.

An aging Hindu master grew tired of his apprentice complaining, and so, one morning, sent him for some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it.

“How does it taste?” the master asked.

“Bitter,” spit the apprentice.

The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake, and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, “Now drink from the lake.”

As the water dripped down the young man’s chin, the master asked, “How does it taste?”

“Fresh,” remarked the apprentice.

“Do you taste the salt?” asked the master.

At this, the master sat beside this serious young man who so reminded him of himself and took his hands, offering, “The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains exactly the same. However, the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things . . . Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”

This, I think, brings us to the role of the church. The job of the church is to call us to see our own lives being connected to something much larger. We understand how our own struggles are not just our struggles but part of what it means to live in this world. It is in the church that we find a container for our own experiences and see how our own lives share so much with those around us. In the speaking of the joys in parish concerns we get a glimpse of what our lives have been or will be. We know that we are part of a larger continuity.

I’m sometimes amazed the way we seem to find ourselves where we need to be. Something seems to lead people here when they are ready to be here. People will tell me about how they heard about the church a long time ago but didn’t come. Then one day something leads them to come.

But that is what we come looking for when we show up here. We want to be called out of ourselves. We want to be challenged to walk our talk. We want to have a place where we ask ourselves whether we are living in right relationship with others and with the earth. We want to have a place where we are not always made comfortable, but where we can move into a fullness of being.

We want to make sense of our lives and the lives of those who have gone before and the lives of those who will come after us. We want to make sense of the twists and turns that life takes. We can’t always know where that will be.

Last week I returned to my home in Wisconsin to attend the funeral for my beloved aunt Helen. She died a week ago after a long illness. There were nine siblings in my father’s family and she was the last one to go.

So on Monday morning I found myself on a plane to the Heartland. For context you should know a little bit about the town where I grew up. Think of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegone. It is a town of 250 people. There is a Roman Catholic church and a Lutheran church and just about everybody belongs to one or the other. When I grew up there were four taverns in town. Now there are just three.

It had been quite a few years since I had been in the church of my childhood.

Growing up I saw all kinds of hypocrisy there. This was not good since my family saw me as the one in the family who would most likely become a minister.

So here we are many years later. Life has not gone exactly according to the script.

Her visitation was to begin at 10 a.m. and her funeral service was scheduled to begin at noon. In my small town everybody seems to get to things early so by five minutes of noon the minister was saying the opening words. Since everybody was there and in place, why wait? So the service begins and sure enough, on the dot, the noon fire whistle blows. That was the first interruption. And sure enough since this was the first Wednesday of the month it was also the day when the tornado siren is tested at ten minutes past noon. And that one, I might add, was a pretty long whistle.

So I’m sitting there. At first I was a little irritated. The whole thing just seemed kind of sloppy. I’m a professional, after all. But then I looked up at the pastor who looked like he wasn’t quite sure what to do. Everyone there seemed somehow suspended in the moment. And all of a sudden I had an image of my aunt Helen, that she probably would have gotten a kick out of this. As I thought about it I knew that she probably wouldn’t care.

In that moment I was aware that she was of this place and that I am of that place. That it isn’t perfect but that all in all it is a pretty good place to be from.

The church is not a perfect institution. None of us are perfect. But most of the time we are all doing our best. We learn that our troubles are not just our own but probably shared by many of the people around us.

Ministers are congregations grow and prosper and struggle together. They are greater together than they would be separately. At its best, the relationship can be a mutual flourishing. They learn together, hopefully grow together. They can learn to walk their talk together. They can frustrate each other in all kinds of ways. But it all comes out of relationship. The image I carry from these years is that I have been planted in good, rich, fertile soil.

This has been a time full of blessings. I’ve learned that we can’t know what any particular day will bring. Our job, first of all, is to show up and to try to be present.

Whether it is the week where, all of a sudden, you get to officiate at 18 weddings;

Whether it is the time when a tragedy strikes and you don’t know what you are going to say;

Whether it is the time when you are out marching for peace or civil rights and realize that you are not alone and that by your presence you can make a difference. You realize that you are surrounded by fellow pilgrims.

Whether it is that moment when we have the awareness that we are okay the way we are and in fact we are lovely, amazing, creatures just the way we are.

Life does not always take us where we think it is going to take us. And for this, on this day, we give thanks. Amen.

PRAYER

Great Spirit, hear our prayers this day. We give thanks for all those who have gone before us. Open us to all that life has to offer us. Call us to be present to the beauty and the tragedy of life. Help us to know that we are connected to all of life and that what touches one touches us all. For this we pray this day. Amen.

BENEDICTION

Let your light shine, good people. May life surprise you and may you always live in gratitude. Amen.

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