A sermon by F. Jay Deacon
Preached at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence

November 7, 2004

The poet Wislawa Szymborska wrote:¹

An endless rain is just beginning.
Into the ark, for where else can you go . . .

Rivers are swelling and bursting their banks.
Into the ark . . .

As far as the eye can see, there's water and hazy horizon.
Into the ark, plans for the distant future,
joys in difference,
admiration for the better man,
choice not narrowed down to one of two,
outworn scruples,
time to think it over,
and the belief that all this
will still come in handy someday.

For the sake of the children
that we still are,
fairy tales have happy endings.
That's the only finale that will do here, too.
The rain will stop,
the waves will subside,
the clouds will part
in the cleared-up sky,
and they'll be once more
what clouds overhead ought to be:
lofty and rather lighthearted
in their likeness to things
drying in the sun —
isles of bliss,
lambs,
cauliflowers,
diapers.

Wednesday evening a group of you gathered for an informal conversation that turned a truly terrible day into one worth having got up for. You talked honestly, authentically, and with passion. The theme, once we got out some feelings, was How to take hold, finding where we can take hold: each of us individually, and all of us together.

Because that's the only way to thrive in a time when an assault on the fragile layer of atmosphere that envelopes our planet — just 12 miles deep — is wreaking irreversible destruction, at an ever-quickening rate; — when our nation's unflattering habit of exploiting the world's people — especially if they live near oil — is encouraging religious fanatics in those lands to strike in the most horrific ways; — when eleven states just voted a vicious "not welcome" sign to their queer citizens; — when greed reigns as some kind of doctrine of the religious fanaticism that now rules our own country and we face a prospect of endless war.

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Hhhhhhmn. It's wrenching, crushing news that greets us. And we know we cannot simply change the subject. If the facts are appalling, it only infantalizes us to ignore them. Our spirituality isn't going to help us if it doesn't lead us and help us to face them calmly and clearly. The only honorable response is to open our eyes, acknowledge the truth, and take hold of this aching world with strong loving hands. But where to take hold?

Grieve — yes, grieve the destruction that can never be made right. This physical earth and the wellbeing of millions will never be the same. And within and beyond the grief: —

What is essential for us today is a sure faith in our own human potentialities. Our UU religious tradition has never ceased to proclaim that our greatest, our only hope — is our humanity, and the capacities hidden within it — within us.

So let us begin these reflections in that faith. We know that humanity is capable of great wrong, because we humans hold within us something like godlike powers. And those powers will be directed and wielded by the vision of life that commands our energies. We gather here for moral purposes, in pursuit of moral vision, a moral vision of what we can be and do.

It will have to be a vision that takes into account the particular persons who are this community of vision. It means finding those places where you, and I, and we together, can take hold, where we are, as the people and the community we are. It means coming to know and trust the potentialities that are in us. It means finding the Work that is ours to do and the synergy of what we can do together.

It means you, and me, and us looking at the place where we are and seeing it through new eyes, seeing the revolutionary, subversive potential in just where we are, learning where and how to take hold. It means coming together and releasing our imagination.

We have a human need to achieve. We will get through this, and survive, and thrive, and triumph, when we are engaged in this work and we know we are effectively subverting the powers that oppress and challenging the processes of destruction, — when there are enough of those moments when we can exclaim "Ha! We did it!"

Because these times will either demoralize us, or they will radicalize us. We're in a situation where we've got to do great stuff or we'll drown.

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A member wrote to me this week of a sentiment that I've heard from a lot of people: that this time is a testing time — testing our vision, testing our devotion to our vision.

So it is. It brings us UUs face up with the question: What are we willing to risk? It asks us, Is there anything worth living for and dying for? How deep is our devotion to our work in this world, to the vision we profess? How deeply has it taken hold of us?

We gather in a religious community because that's what this company of people is about, and what it's for. We keep those questions at the center of our worship. But also at the core of this community must be a deep trust in our imagination, trust in our devotion — we're not going to flake off —, trust in our human capacities. It's time to gather, and gather often, to discern where it is that we can take hold, and to give shape to what we are capable creating.

Now, there are things we simply do out of conscience, because that's who we are and it's just a matter of integrity. We do it whether it makes any measurable difference or not. We can drive right by Exxon-Mobil stations, even when the gauge says Empty, and quit rewarding the greediest, most determined enemies of the earth and air and seas, perpetrators of crimes against humanity and the earth. Not to speak of one of the most blatantly anti-gay of corporations.

But surely our imagination is rich enough and our devotion deep enough that we can find places to take hold in a way that makes a difference, that puts our strength against the deadly trends and begins to turn the tide in the direction of life.

It's time to dare, not a time to think small or fearfully. I remind you of these words of the great Unitarian pioneer William Ellery Channing:

There are seasons in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution . . . These are periods when . . . hope and trust and instinct claim a share with prudence in the guidance of affairs, when, in truth, to dare is the highest wisdom.

At our gathering was Peggy Macleod. Peggy, I hope you don't mind. She is a dedicated pioneer of solar and alternative energy in this region. So we talked of ambitious but awfully do-able projects:
§ More walk-through tours of solar houses so people can actually see what can be done. And we can provide guidance for us and for the community on making the transition to solar power, converting our own houses.
§ And we can make a lot of noise: and ask this allegedly progressive Western Massachusetts — "Where are the wind turbines?" — and ask and ask again until we see them: and ask: "How is it that we are still getting our energy from coal plants?" We can find new and vital ways to engage in public witness, public ministry.
§ Someone suggested that our new sign, soon to appear in front, be lighted with energy from a solar panel — as a witness to everybody who walks by, as a witness against the removal less than a week after President Carter left the White House and Ronald Reagan moved in, the removal of the solar panels there that have never been replaced — and a witness for sanity, and human responsibility, and on behalf of this world of life. Isn't that what we're here to do?

§ The excitement grew, and led to further talks with others of you. Jean Marie Hill proposed a brilliant project to counter the logic and assumptions of the religious fanaticism that is leading us down this reckless path — because, as I said a couple of weeks ago, that's what undergirds what is happening in this nation, now nearly completely under the control of those forces. You've heard the Hindu cosmology story about how the earth rests on the back of a giant turtle, and somebody asks, well, what's underneath the turtle?, and the answer is, Another turtle; and then somebody asks Well, what's under that turtle, and at that point someone in the audience stands up and says, Young man, it's turtles all the way down! Well, if you want to know what lies underneath and supports the ruinous heedless recklessness of our government, it's fundamentalist ideology mixed with greed, all the way down. Somebody has to answer and it may as well be us.

§ Others talked of the particular places where their lives are lived, in educational institutions, in countless other places where individually each of us is called to take hold. We spoke of our need for a place to gather, to renew our strength, to nurture one another's gifts and hold each other up, to believe in each other. I need a place that speaks of the things that make me tremble; — I need a place that speaks of the things that keep me awake at night, and of the things that get me up in the morning.

I need a place that reaches for the glorious golden city in that hymn we sing so often, a place where we can come together to forge the vision of days to come. Perhaps you hold within you a piece of the vision.

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The thing that matters is you and me and us together finding a place to take hold — whether it's one of these endeavors I've just spoken of, or the Treehouse Project, or work with a shelter, or parenting, or some other work that is made for your hands and heart and mind. There is nothing quite so satisfying as finding that place, and taking hold, and doing, in that place, what only you, and only me, and only we can do. Where can we take hold, us, here?

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Imagine a congregation that's electric with excitement because we've deeply and truly committed ourselves to a the vision that guides us, a vision big and noble enough to command us.

This time can be, if we make it so — an opening to our best capacities and potentialities. If we are willing to risk, stick our necks out, sacrifice, and devote ourselves to the high dreams that move us.

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In the Reform Jewish prayerbook for the High Holy Days, The Gates of Repentance, is this, from David Rokeach²:

Glory to those who hope!
For the future is theirs;
those who stand unflinching against the mountain
Shall gain its summit.

So hopes the river, running to the sea,
to fulfill its dreams in the crash of waters.
So longs the tree, branching skyward
At last to touch the palm of sun.

Therefore we love dawn as a promise of day,
The nightingale's long-song as a longing for birth,
the flowing of streams as the beat of dreams made real,
Streams cutting channels for rivers of the future
And never growing weary.
And all who join hands, trusting creation —

Forge, then, the vision of days to come:
As the waves shape the rocky shore,
As the smith moulds white-hot steel at will,
Form dreams of faithfulness.

Desolation will not leave the desert
Until it leaves the heart.

I take comfort, real, deep comfort, in looking out and seeing this company of people, who care. You can join in this journey of committed love and vision. You can opt out. But I believe with all my heart that it's not in changing the subject, but in taking up this great work, that the terrible weight of these times can be transformed for us into rich meaning, a deeply satisfying sense of achievement, a depth of comradeship, and even a sense of defiant triumph that can fill our days with joy.

Copyright © 2004 F. Jay Deacon. All rights reserved.

¹ "Into the Ark." From View With a Grain of Sand. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, 1993, 1995.
² Gates of Repentance: The New Union Prayerbook for the Days of Awe. New York, Central Conference of American Rabbis, 5738/1978, pp. 13-14. Rokeach was born L’vov in 1916 and moved to Palestine in the 1930s.

Meditate

How good, how grand, the sight of those who yearn as we yearn,
who grieve the things we grieve,
whose souls are made to rejoice at those things in which we rejoice,
who labor in a common endeavor for the sake of a common dream.

In this company we gather
gather our courage
gather our wisdom
gather what light we have

for the sake of our lives
for the sake of the world of life.

Now let the energies of love

and of resistance to all that destroys
and of freshness in the midst of stale despair
and of urgency when it's easy to give up and give in
and of joy in doing holy work

bear us up, heal us, fire our hearts,

and assure us that we labor not in vain,
but that unseen tides lift us and carry us

In this silence . . .