by F. Jay Deacon
at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence
June 12, 2005
by F. Jay Deacon
at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence
June 12, 2005
In these last months we've been through a lot together: births and deaths, marriages and break-ups, loss and reunion, heartbreak and anger and tears and hugs and laughter. We were surprised by joys and there was laughter and affection. But like an inexorable tide, this year carried us also into very hard things. For some the surprises weren't what you'd wanted, weren't very easy to take: a setback, a loss, a reminder of your vulnerability, a health crisis or a financial one or a career impass or a love that unravelled or got complicated and difficult.
And there were new faces, new initiatives, new hopes, new experiences. These are what we share in religious community. And now the breathing-space of Summer, long-awaited; but ironically, we always seem to approach it under pressure.
Everyone I know feels the pressure. Graduation from graduate school or college or high school or whatever. Settling in or moving out. End-of-season projects, things not yet done and time's up. Occasions to observe, events to show up for. Plans not quite worked out.
Your mind sounds like a crowded bar — voices and voices and noise and tumult. Somewhere in there, there's a message, a hint, something important. Or not. William Butler Yeats called them Ravens of unceasing thought.
I sit. In the frenzy and busyness, — and, far more urgently, when the survival of the nation, and the world, and humanity, are in question — I sit. Can my mind become quiet? What then? What good will that do?
Emptiness. Perhaps the closest I shall get to the elemental ground of things out of which anything ever comes, and certainly, anything original or useful.
Outside this window the irises we planted last season bloom, and the rhododendron. I think: they have not always been there. There have not always been irises, or rhododendron, or oak trees or humans. How did this ground, this earth, know to manifest itself in some spectacularly original way? What intelligence exists within this dirt, those seeds, this mind, everything that is? How did I, how did you, come to be?
What is calling to me now; what that is fresh and original would manifest itself here, now? The pressure is still there. This is the moment — for what?
The noise in my head doesn't know the answer, finds nothing original. The silence does. Out of it, out of the silent brilliance of all being, out of the silent core of us, of all us creatures, it will come. If we are quiet and attentive we will know. A gesture of grace, or a word of acknowledgement, or forgiveness spoken? A corner to turn? A moment recognized and a call to answer? Or an urge the return again to the silence? The tension lifts when I trust what it is that makes an iris out of the dirt and that lives and moves in me, in us.
Trust the quiet in your mind and be attentive to it. That's what I wish for you in these summer weeks ahead, when some will scatter to the four winds for the season, or to your own backyard. Of course, not everyone disappears; there will be a service here every Sunday at 10, and I can see they will be worthwhile. But we're about to shift into a lower gear for a few weeks, until Labor Day, to renew, to prepare for another season, to read, to travel, to garden, to play, to catch fireflies, to let them go.
Someone has said that Unitarian Universalists are the only ones God trusts enough to leave alone for the entire summer.
And when return in the Fall: May be we open to the fresh, the original, the urgent, the true. And as we take up this work again, we can be assured that those who show up to share it will be just the right people, the ones that day requires, and that what might be and ought to be is exactly what will be. May we all return, safe, renewed.
Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but all things renew, germinate, and spring. Why should we import rags and relics into the new hour? We call it by many names, — conservatism, . . . inertia, not newness, not the way onward. . . . Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young. . . .But the man and woman [who] have outlived their hope, . . . renounce aspiration, accept the actual for the necessary, and talk down to the young. Let them, then, become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and power. . . . In nature every moment is new; the past is always swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
Anne Lamott
"Holy of Holies 101," in Plan B
I did not mean to help start a Sunday school, and did not have a speck of confidence that I could do so: I have only mediocre self-esteem when I am doing things that I am good at or that don't require any self-esteem. I grow anxious on my way to the dump with a car full of garbage, convinced that my garbage and I will be rejected . . . I do not particularly like large groups of children, which is to say, more than two at a time, and I could not bear to miss any of the regular service, with which Sunday school would be concurrent. . . .
But six years ago I came to believe that I was supposed to start a Sunday school . . .
I know that with writing, you start where you are, and you flail around for a while, and if you keep doing it, every day you get closer to something good.
Word got out in the community . . , and children started arriving. Soon we had eleven kids: four black, four white, two Mexican, and one Asian . . .
Finally, three adults came to help, all middle-aged white women. This was sort of frustrating, but one of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. . . .
The teachers were all hard-core left-wing types, and that worked for me. One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness.
Holiness has most often been revealed to me in the exquisite pun of the first syllable, in holes — in not enough help, in brokenness, mess. . . . In holes and lostness I can pick up the light of small ordinary progress, newly made moments flecked like pepper into the slog and the disruptions.
Someone long ago said that God is not a boss or a judge, that God is a purpose, and I tried to live by this.
There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. one of them asked, "Why on our hearts, and not in them?" The rabbi answered, "Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside."
In this little space between birth and death, let us awaken to the imperfect miracles that we are, and to the day we are given to live, and to the world of life around us and within
In this silence.
Remain standing:
Would you take the hand of the person next to you.
And be aware of the hands you hold: their warmth, texture, weight.
As an infant these same hands reached out for nourishment.
As a child they shakily wrote a name on paper for the first time.
They have wiped away tears, clenched in anger, waved hello and waved goodbye countless times, and embraced loved ones.
And today these hands are hte tangible link that connect us.
These hands have worked, are working, will work to make the world fairer and more beautiful.
Look around you. See those around you who have experienced so much that is life, who now face another day, another season.
May the circle be open but never broken.
Go in peace:
The work of peace is in our hands.