by Rev. Thomas Disrud

A sermon given February 4, 2007

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

This week the great newspaper columnist Molly Ivins died. I will miss her a great deal. She was—first and foremost—a great storyteller. And she wasn’t one to pull punches when she had something to say. With Ivins there was usually little doubt where she stood. This week many of her stories have been told once again. In one that stood out for me, she talked about how she came to the realization at a young age that adults could be liars. That realization would shape her and the work that she would do throughout her life.

Ivins came of age in a wealthy enclave of Houston called River Oaks at a time when there were still segregated drinking fountains—one for whites and one for blacks. As a child, she once started to drink from a “colored” fountain, but her mother stopped her by saying, “Don’t do that—it’s dirty.” However, since there were few African Americans in River Oaks except for domestic servants, the “colored” fountain was used far less, and was therefore cleaner than the “white” one. Molly could see for herself that the fountain wasn’t dirty. And, as she would later recount, once you realize that adults are lying about one thing, you start to wonder what else they might be lying about.

It was, she said, one of the first times that she realized the way she saw things might be a lot different than how most of the people around her saw them. And reading her columns we know how true that was.

Molly Ivins seemed to live with a particular clarity. She was unabashedly liberal. Her gifts took her far away from her Texas roots all the way to the New York Times. But she was eventually called back to Texas—and it was in the context of that particular place that her work will most be remembered.

Each one of us makes our way in the world. Each one of us lives in a particular place and time. We make our way in life figuring things out—what we believe and don’t believe, who we trust, what we are supposed to be doing with our lives. To one extent or another we find our way. Sometimes there is clarity, often we find ourselves asking a whole lot of questions and searching for a whole lot of answers. Or, as our principles say, we engage in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

In the process we come to know that the world is not perfect and we come to know that we ourselves are not perfect. We come to see ourselves in relation to others and to the larger world. And in all of that we begin to discover who it is that we really are.

But we all deal with the struggles of the world. Just think about the story of the Buddha. It was only when he left the protected life of the palace and when he went out into the street—into the real world—that he became awakened. Outside the palace he saw the sick, the dying, the poor, the old. It was at this moment that we started on the path towards enlightenment.

Sometimes it seems life would be easier if we didn’t have to be with the suffering of the world. Sometimes it seems like it would be easier to just look for answers from our comfortable corner of the world where suffering doesn’t exist. But that is not the way life is.

There’s a Sufi story about Mulla Nasrudin, who was outside on his hands and knees below a lantern when a friend walked up. “What are you doing, Mulla,” his friend asked. “I’m looking for my key. I’ve lost it.” So his friend got down on his hands and knees too and they both searched for a long time in the dirt beneath the lantern. Finding nothing, his friend finally turned to him and asked, “Where exactly did you lose it?” Nasrudin replied, “I lost it in the house, but there is more light out here.”[1]

Sometimes we have to live in the dark—and our way, that might not always be clear. We know it is in there somewhere but we may not know how to find it. Sometimes it takes a while to figure it out. We are complex creatures with histories and families and all kinds of challenges. It may not always be clear what is standing in our way. Sometimes we have to have the courage to look in the shadows to find what it is we need to find.

Rachel Naomi Remen tells this story about an odd dream she had: It was only a single image, but she awoke deeply disturbed. She had no idea what the dream meant, but felt like it was some sort of a message because it aroused strong feelings of sadness and a sense of being trapped. The image was very vivid: It was a daffodil bulb planted in the earth and lying on top of it was a large and very heavy rock. Because of this rock, the daffodil was unable to bloom.

For several weeks, she could not get this dream out of her mind, and eventually she described it to a friend. The friend said, “Perhaps there is a conversation going on between the rock and the daffodil. Why not listen in?” And Remen said that with surprise she realized that she knew this conversation well. The rock was saying, “It’s a dangerous world. DON’T BLOOM! I will keep you safe.”

Remen began to laugh and said, “That rock sounds just like my father.” Her friend asked her if she could hear the other side of the conversation. What was the bulb saying to the rock? “I need to bloom,” Remen told her. “Blooming is my whole purpose for being alive.”

The friends sat together thinking about this for a while. Then the friend frowned and said, “It should feel good to have that heavy rock between you and danger, shouldn’t it?” Suddenly Remen’s eyes filled with tears but she says she had no idea why. She let the matter drop there. But from time to time she would think of this strange dream, and once she even dreamt it again. It was just as disturbing.

Years go by and Remen is agonizing over a major career change. The stress of this decision became intense, and one morning she awoke with a severe pain in her back. Just to the right of her spine. Annoyed, she thought that she had slept wrong and took two aspirin. But the pain did not go away. After the third or fourth day she went to see her doctor, who told her that the pain did not correspond to anything anatomical that he knew about and therefore must have been connected to stress. He had nothing more to offer.

The pain went on for weeks. Finally someone suggested that she consult an acupuncturist to see if she might find some relief. This was not the usual thing to do at that time, but she had become desperate. So she went to see an acupuncturist named Dr. Rossman. He took her pulse for a long time and examined her carefully. He ran his finger lightly down her back. When he touched the place that was hurting, the pain was so intense she cried out. “Ah,” he said, “this is an acupuncture point. The life energy, the chi, is stuck here.” With her permission, he could try to release the block by putting an acupuncture needle in that spot. Remen had never had an acupuncture treatment and was skeptical, but the pain had gone on for so many weeks that she was willing to try. So she lay down on her stomach on his examining table and closed her eyes.

She writes: “As soon as I felt the needle, the old, half-forgotten image of the daffodil bulb and the rock reappeared to me with extraordinary clarity. Suddenly I understood how the rock felt. The rock was afraid to let the bulb bloom. It knew the daffodil’s value and was determined that it must not come to harm. If it bloomed and became visible, it could be hurt. I also understood for the first time that if it did not bloom, the daffodil might die.”

She talks about how, in her family, survival was something learned. Her father grew up during the Depression and the war. He had become an expert at surviving. It was a question of tenacity, of putting safety above all other considerations. Living, on the other hand, was a matter of passion and risk. Of finding something important and serving it. Of doing whatever was needed in order to survive out loud.

As a child of her family, she said she had not understood the difference in this way before. Perhaps survival was not the goal of life after all. As she anxiously began to wonder if it was possible to protect something without stopping the life in it, she says that in her mind’s eye the rock spontaneously began to change its shape. She writes: “As I watched in surprise, slowly it became taller and thinner and more transparent until I realized it was becoming a greenhouse. Inside it, the daffodil bulb put out a spike and bloomed. The yellow of the flower was extraordinary—as if it were made, not of petals, but of light.” Lying there on the table, she began to weep.

In the blink of an eye, things had turned inside out. The reason the rock had given the bulb for not blooming was the very reason it was important to bloom. It was a dangerous world, a world of suffering, loneliness and loss. Daffodils were needed.

Remen writes that after that first treatment, the pain never returned to her back. When she visited the doctor and told him the story he said that every acupuncture point has a name and that the one that was blocked for her was called the Heart Protector. Shortly after that she left her faculty position at a university and found a new way to practice medicine, which was the path she was supposed to be on.[2]

Life, sometimes, takes time to figure out. Sometimes it takes finding the right protection. It takes our willingness to pay attention to the signs that come our way. And sometimes they may not make sense, at least not right away. It takes time to know how our stories are different from—and how they grow out of –the stories of others. It may take time to get enough distance from all the messages we receive about what we should be, or how we should be.

Through it all we are asked to make our way. We are asked to take all that we inherit, we are asked to bring all of our gifts and all of our shortcomings and make our way in the world. We are asked to use our strengths that we might flourish and that we might do what we are called to do.

These days in the midst of war, in the midst of terror, in the midst of so many being pushed to the margins of our society, it is hard to know where to begin. It may seem clear where we should go but that rock might be sitting right there too and we don’t know how we could move it.

God, mystery, beloved presence is with us on that journey. Our job first of all is to remain loyal to our call, to listen to that still, small voice within. It might lead us to places that are not comfortable, that are not always pretty, but they are also what is real in the world.

Our job is to be present with all the suffering and the beauty and to live in faith that we will know what is ours to take on. Sometimes it is easy to want to run from it—certainly it is these days—but that is not the path the spirit has put us on.

Words of Rumi:

Don’t run around this world

looking for a hole to hide in.

There are wild beasts in every cave!

If you live with mice,

the cat claws will find you.

The only real rest comes

when you’re alone with God.

Live in the nowhere that you came from,

even though you have an address here.

You have eyes that see from that nowhere,

and eyes that judge distances,

how high and how low.

You own two shops,

and you run back and forth.

Try to close the one that’s a fearful trap,

getting always smaller. Checkmate,

this way. Checkmate that.

Keep open the shop

where you’re not selling fishhooks anymore.

You are the fish that swims free.

The spirit doesn’t always call us to what is easy or simple. So often it is just the opposite. It asks us to speak our truth and sometimes that can get us into trouble.

But the spirit never leaves us. It is with us no matter how far we stray, not matter how lost we might be, no matter how deep our despair. No matter what the latest news is out of Baghdad or Washington, DC or Portland, the spirit is with us.

Whether we are newspaper columnists read by millions or one peace activist in a sea of peace activists. Whether we are parents or teachers or elected officials or just plain old citizens who vote, the spirit is with us.

May we, in all our days, live with clarity and with courage

So be it . Amen.

Prayer

Spirit of life, be with us this day. Be with all the people of the world. Call us to live with purpose, call us to always swim free. Call us, always, to the work of justice and love, of hope and peace. Amen.

Benediction

Live with courage, live with hope, and remember always that you don’t walk alone. Go in love and in peace. Amen.