by Rev. Thomas Disrud

A sermon given February 10, 2008

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

As pollsters have talked with people around the country the past few months they have found a pretty universal sense of gloom among the voters. From the war in Iraq to a greater sense of economic insecurity to global warming, the issues before us are immense. The surveys show what I hear in my role as a parish minister. These are difficult times and people are struggling.[1]

The times we are living in ask much of us and what I hear from many of you is a not quite knowing where to start place. How is it I can make the right choices in my life? What do I tell my children? How am I to live?

We are not alone in those questions, and yet at the very time we face such questions we find ourselves in a culture where it is so easy to feel isolated. That is not good.

The questions are not the kind that bring easy answers. They are the kind we live with for a long, long, time and never quite find an answer. What we find is making our way from here to here and then to here. It is what the poet Mary Oliver calls a long conversation in the heart—a trusting that we will find our way to the place where we need to be. That we will have the answers that we need. That we will find our way.

Trust doesn’t always come easily for me—in fact I get pretty impatient sometimes. I want answers. But I know they may not necessarily come easily. I’ve learned that I first of all have to start by paying attention to what is around me.

Lately there has been an image in my head. It is one of my earliest memories and one that has been with me throughout my life. I am four or five years old. I am lying in the grass of our front yard and my dogs are with me. I am looking up at the big clouds in the sky against the backdrop of blue. In that moment of looking at that sky I was aware of a connection with everything that I couldn’t necessarily understand but that I knew with clarity was there.

Now in these days of gray in this part of the world we live in remembering that image might be on the surface a longing for sun and blue skies and the thought of lying in the grass without getting really muddy. But I know it might also point to something deeper, a longing for meaning, a longing for connection. This image has been with me for quite a long time now and I have come to recognize it when it comes to me in my dream life and in my waking life. The image is a reminder for me that I am not alone, that I am part of some whole that I may never fully understand, but none the less is always there with me.

Those are the kinds of big things that I have to keep remembering. That I have to keep reminding myself about—that I am not alone, but with something much greater.

A story.

Writer Maya Angelou tells of a lesson she had with her voice teacher, Frederick Wilkerson, when he asked her to read for him. She writes: “I was twenty-four, very erudite, very worldly. He asked that I read from ‘Lessons in Truth,’ a section which ended with these words: ‘God loves me.’ I read the piece and closed the book, and the teacher said, ‘Read it again.’ I pointedly opened the book, and I sarcastically read, ‘God loves me.’ He said, ‘Again.’ After about the seventh repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love me. Me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person with God, constitutes the majority?”[2]

How would it be if we all moved in the world with the confidence that we were one with god, that no matter how we mess up, no matter how we let ourselves or others down there is a knowing that we are part of all of creation. That we are all a part of some vast mystery—that we are whole just as we are? How would it be if every thought came with the mindfulness of how we are not isolated beings but part of a much larger whole?

We can’t know all that is being asked of us in these times, all that is out there that needs us, that needs our choices, our thinking, our loving, our being. 

The late theologian Bernard Loomer talked about SIZE—to describe how we are asked to be in the world. He distinguished between small versus large truths, that if we give our attention to what is most important then we will find our way.

He writes: “by size I mean the stature of a person’s soul, the range and depth of his love, his capacity for relationship. I mean the volume of life you can take into your being and still maintain your integrity and individuality, the intensity and variety of outlook you can entertain in the unity of your being without feeling defensive or insecure. I mean the strength of your spirit to encourage others to become freer in the development of their diversity and uniqueness. I mean the power to sustain more complex and enriching tensions. I mean the magnanimity of concern to provide conditions that enable others to increase in stature.[3]

Loomer called this the fundamental category, his essential principle.

How is it we find ourselves growing into our size, how is it we make a context for others to also find their size, how we make space for others to grow, this is a constant work in progress in life. We are asked in the times we live to be people of size, to see the other as ourselves, to see ourselves not just as isolated beings but connected through and through.

Too often, though, we can get caught up in all kinds of things that may not be all that meaningful, or at least with time and perspective we can see that. But those are also the things that can keep us from seeing what is most important in our lives. As the writer Annie Dillard says, there can be a great temptation to fiddle around making itsy-bitsy friends or itsy-bitsy meals or spending time with just about anything else that is itsy-bitsy. Almost anything can be trivialized—it depends on what we do with it.

Sometimes we are called to let go of our pretenses, our ego. We have to get past all the distractions to a place where we can hear the inner voice. If we can do that, we make room for the spirit to be present.

Last fall I read a story about love that has been with me ever since. You may have heard it too. It was about the recently retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Her husband of 55 years has advanced Alzheimer’s disease and has a romance with another woman and the story, as told by their son, is that the former justice was thrilled, happy to see the new couple holding hands on a porch swing. It was, for her, a relief to see her husband so content.

The story illuminated the reality that relationships often develop among Alzheimer’s patients, that the desire for intimacy remains even when the disease takes so much else. But what I have been thinking about since reading the story is about Sandra Day O’Connor’s reaction. It revealed something about a depth of love present in that relationship. One commentator said that most of the examples of love we hear involve young love—new, exciting, and alive. This might be called an example of old love, a kind of love that comes with time and lived circumstance. A kind of love for the other that is given freely from the fullness of one’s being.[4]

We may not always know when a question will be asked of us. And we can’t know how we will respond. But we can orient ourselves to seeing the world in as big a way as possible, What, I ask myself, are the most important things in my life? My family? My work? My values? When was the last time I sat down and gave thanks for the things that mean to most to me?

There are times, of course, when we are in touch with those things that are most important. Sometimes it is when life seems to throw us for a curve, to rip away our assumptions, to make us question our most basic beliefs. 

Those are the times when we are in touch with God, or the divine, or the spirit—whatever we might call it. They are those moments when we are called to something larger, when we are aware of a connection that seems to take us out of ourselves.

The spirit moves in those places of dis-ease and says yes. You are alive and you are well—and you are not alone. We can either look at the world in all the ways that it is not likely to work or we can look at the world and imagine how it can be and how we might use our powers well. To be mindful of the choices we have and to make them with open hearts. To see life in all of its brokenness and still see there possibility.

There’s a parable about an interview with three stonecutters building a cathedral in the fourteenth century. When the first stonecutter is asked what he is doing, the man replies with bitterness that he is cutting stones into blocks, a foot by a foot by three quarters of a foot. With frustration, he describes a life in which he has done this over and over, and will continue to do it until he dies. The second stonecutter is also cutting stones into blocks, a foot by a foot by three quarters of a foot, but he replies in a somewhat different way. With warmth, he tells the interviewer that he is earning a living for his beloved family; through this work his children have clothes and food to grow strong, he and his wife have a home which they have filled with love. But it is the third man, in a joyous voice, who he tells of the privilege of participating in the building of this great cathedral, so strong that it will stand as a holy lighthouse for a thousand years.[5]

How are we to live? How are we to be in these times? That is a question I ask myself just about everyday and everyday I am of aware that I don’t have the answers. And that is the moment when faith comes in. that is the moment that I am reminded that I don’t have all the answers, but that what I need to know will be revealed. That is what comes from that long conversation in the heart.

It is hard to know what life will be like in a thousand years, or even a hundred or even ten. So much is unknown, we are asked to start in the place just where we are.

The writer Wendell Berry says “It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.”

Love calls us into life over and over again. It asks us to be present, to see beyond our individual selves, to put ourselves forward in service. To accept ourselves as we are, with all of our brokenness and all of the gifts we bring. To see the world both in its brokenness and in its beauty and wholeness.

To remember always that we are not alone, but on a journey together.

I think that it is an important part of why it is we come together here Sunday morning. We want to take time to be with God, or the spirit, or the divine, or the common good, or our highest values.

We want to take time to remember who it is we are and where it is we are going. To be reminded that life asks us to stay with that long conversation in the heart, that doesn’t ask for quick answers but is most of all grounded in the assurance that we do not walk alone.

Words of Rilke:

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,

going far ahead of the road I have begun.

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

It has its inner light, even from a distance –

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,

into something else, which hardly sensing, we already are;

a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave …

but what we feel is the wind in our faces.[6]

Our lives are never static. They are always changing and growing and surprising and challenging us. That’s the way it is, that’s the way it has always been. Life asks much of us, sometimes more than it seems we can bear. We are asked to stay in that conversation, to stay open, to keep our hearts open, to live in faith that what we’ll need will be there, that what we’ll bring will be enough. That love, in the end, will show us the way. 

May it be so. Amen.

PRAYER

Let us pray. Great spirit of life, that moves through our lives, we give thanks on this day for the abundance in our midst. Help us to always be open to the questions in our lives. Help us to have patience along the way knowing they will take us to a place where we need to be. In the celebrations and the sorrows along the way, be with us. Bless our journey. May all of us know we are loved and may that love sustain us. Amen.

BENEDICTION

As you leave this day, remember that you are held in the arms of the beloved. May you bless the world with your life. May the spirit move in you and through you. Go now in love and in peace.

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Copyright 2008, Rev. Thomas Disrud. All rights reserved.