The warm weather and blue skies of this week have colluded to obscure the turning of the season. The smoke of the fires, by obscuring the sun, made the late summer temperatures feel more like fall. Now early fall feels like summer. 

I had begun to feel dis-oriented and un-grounded. The surreal truth of our politics and protests and the tragedy of the virus-caused-deaths no doubt made those feelings worse. I hesitate to mention the Presidential debate…  

I am so grateful to my faithful friend, the Sweet Gum tree outside my kitchen window. The leaves have begun to turn, reminding me that the promise of seasonal change will be fulfilled yet again. We have not yet managed to completely disrupt that cycle. 

This turning leaves me in a reflective mode. 

The seasonal cycle is not a metaphor for change, of course. It is a metaphor for the system needed to sustain the life we know. It is about constancy and predictability…not truly about change. 

One of my favorite poems is Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich (https://poets.org/poem/diving-wreck). On the surface, the poem tells the story of scuba diving down to the wreck of a sunken ship. But deeper, the poem explores the difficulty of living with both the stories we tell and the truth those stories often obscure. 

“I came to explore the wreck. 
The words are purposes, 

The words are maps 
I came to see the damage that was done 
and the treasures that prevail. 
… 
the wreck and not the story of the wreck 
the thing itself and not the myth…” 

“the wreck and not the story of the wreck.” 

It is so seductive to believe the stories that we tell:  

…that everyone has the right to vote 

…that the police “serve and protect” communities of color 

…that we have one tax system (not one for wage earners and one for the wealthy) 

…that a new law or court decision will lead to a change of heart 

I believe that we need to join the poet in “diving into the wreck.” We need to see and know the truth of the wreck we have created and the real dangers we face.  

This is a time to hold as much “truth as we can bear.” You’ve heard me use that phrase before. Philosophers tell us there is no absolute truth and, though I am not an academic, I’m willing to accept that they are right. I accept that my social location and my history shape the truth I can know. 

But we can decide to see more and know more than the stories we were taught allow us to know. 

The poem ends with this stanza: 

“We are, I am, you are 
by cowardice or courage 
the ones who find our way 
back to this scene 
carrying a knife, a camera 
a book of myths 
in which 
our names do not appear.” 

Perhaps the most urgent priority, in this season of turning, is to insure that real change is at least attempted and that…at the very least…the story we accept is a story in which all of our names and all of our lives are present. 

I expect my reflective mood to stay with me through Sunday when I will have the opportunity to talk about our path forward as a religious people. What is the role of the church, of First Unitarian, when we must deconstruct so much we were told to be true, so many assumptions about what must be? What is the role for religious values? What do our core affirmations require of us? 

Hope to “see” you on Sunday when we will celebrate and search for our path forward. 

Blessing, 

Bill 

---

Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich 

First having read the book of myths, 
and loaded the camera, 
and checked the edge of the knife-blade, 
I put on 
the body-armor of black rubber 
the absurd flippers 
the grave and awkward mask. 
I am having to do this 
not like Cousteau with his 
assiduous team 
aboard the sun-flooded schooner 
but here alone. 

There is a ladder. 
The ladder is always there 
hanging innocently 
close to the side of the schooner. 
We know what it is for, 
we who have used it. 
Otherwise 
it is a piece of maritime floss 
some sundry equipment. 

I go down. 
Rung after rung and still 
the oxygen immerses me 
the blue light 
the clear atoms 
of our human air. 
I go down. 
My flippers cripple me, 
I crawl like an insect down the ladder 
and there is no one 
to tell me when the ocean 
will begin. 

First the air is blue and then 
it is bluer and then green and then 
black I am blacking out and yet 
my mask is powerful 
it pumps my blood with power 
the sea is another story 
the sea is not a question of power 
I have to learn alone 
to turn my body without force 
in the deep element. 

And now: it is easy to forget 
what I came for 
among so many who have always 
lived here 
swaying their crenellated fans 
between the reefs 
and besides 
you breathe differently down here. 

I came to explore the wreck. 
The words are purposes. 
The words are maps. 
I came to see the damage that was done 
and the treasures that prevail. 
I stroke the beam of my lamp 
slowly along the flank 
of something more permanent 
than fish or weed 

the thing I came for: 
the wreck and not the story of the wreck 
the thing itself and not the myth 
the drowned face always staring 
toward the sun 
the evidence of damage 
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty 
the ribs of the disaster 
curving their assertion 
among the tentative haunters. 

This is the place. 
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair 
streams black, the merman in his armored body. 
We circle silently 
about the wreck 
we dive into the hold. 
I am she: I am he 

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes 
whose breasts still bear the stress 
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies 
obscurely inside barrels 
half-wedged and left to rot 
we are the half-destroyed instruments 
that once held to a course 
the water-eaten log 
the fouled compass 

We are, I am, you are 
by cowardice or courage 
the one who find our way 
back to this scene 
carrying a knife, a camera 
a book of myths 
in which 
our names do not appear.