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By Dr. Bruce T. Marshall
June 12, 2011
A milestone is a marker that helps determine where we are. The term
refers to a carved stone located along a road that has information
for a traveler, such as, the direction toward a town and the
distance to that community. In earlier times, milestones performed
the function road signs do today. They tell us where we are now and
far it is to get where we want to go.
Sometimes traveling an old road, we’ll come upon a milestone that
was placed many years ago, before highways and interstates were
developed. It will be weathered, the markings might not be
completely legible, but it still communicates a sense of location,
as it also connects us with generations of travelers who have come
before.
Milestones date back to the Roman empire. The Romans placed stone
obelisks, like little Washington monuments, along the network of
roads that the Romans built. In Rome, itself, was a stone that has
been called the “Golden Milestone.” It was said to mark the center
of the Roman Empire. All Roman roads led to this Golden Milestone;
all roads led to Rome.
The Golden Milestone from the Roman Empire was the inspiration for
the Zero Milestone, which is located near the White House in
Washington. The Zero Milestone is a stone, two feet square, four
feet tall. It was intended to be the point of reference for all
United States highways. All highway distances in the nation were to
be measured from that marker. In fact, only roads in the Washington
area use the Zero Milestone to determine relative distances, but it
still stands as a reminder that we need reference points. We can’t
figure where we’ve been or where we’re going if we don’t know where
we are.
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Roads need milestones to identify location. We also need milestones
in our lives to help keep track of where we are.
A birthday is a milestone. Who had a birthday last month in May? Who
has a birthday in June? Who has a birthday in August? On a birthday,
we think where we were last year at this time, five years ago, ten
years go. We wonder: Where will we be next year? Next month, July
24th, is my father’s 90th birthday. My mother’s 90th birthday is in
September. We’ll return to my hometown, gather family and friends,
have a celebration in the social hall of our UU church, invite
people from the community. Ninety years on this earth is a milestone
worth observing, worth celebrating.
An anniversary is a milestone. We think, what has our relationship
been during this past year? What will it be during the next? What do
we hope it will be? What might we do to make that happen?
A holiday is a milestone. What’s happened between last Christmas and
this one? Who was at our Thanksgiving table this year? How about the
year before? Vacations—did we take a vacation last year? If so,
where did we go? If we return to the same place each year, how many
times has it been? What’s happened during those years? How do we
distinguish one year from the next?
Amy’s family has a reunion every two years. For a long time it was
held at a house owned by Amy’s uncle in New Hampshire. A ritual of
those reunions was to gather the children, measure the height of
each, and mark it on a doorframe. Then we could see how much each
child had grown in the two years since the last reunion. The adults
also got marks on the doorframe, but we tended not to measure those
each time we met, particularly as we grown-ups began to shrink..
Objects can also be milestones: things that have particular
significance, that mark something important that has occurred. When
I was a child, there was a piece of decorative white coral on a desk
at home where my father paid the bills, where my mother wrote
letters. It had always been there so I didn’t pay much attention to
it. Then many years later, my mother told of its significance. It
went back to my parents’ early years of married life. One day, my
father came home, having just purchased that piece of coral. He
said, “This is the first time we’ve had enough money that I could
buy something we don’t absolutely need.” That was a milestone, a
marker along life’s journey that helped locate where my parents were
at that point in time.
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Congregations observe milestones; that’s something we do together.
During our joys and sorrows, we note events in our lives that we
want to raise up as significant. And maybe later, we might
remember—oh yes, I put a pebble in the virtual pond for that.
We celebrate weddings in the church and memorial services, marking
both beginnings and endings as milestones. Sometimes too we
celebrate birthdays in church or anniversaries. We note
achievements: graduations, getting a job, getting a promotion,
retirement. We acknowledge losses, which are also milestones.
Someone close to us has died, there is an illness in the family, one
of us or a family moves to a new community.
In our dedication ceremony this morning, we have noted the milestone
of children coming into the world. When a child is born it forever
divides our experience of time into before and after. Before this
child was born and after. And this morning we also recognized the
milestone of church membership. Making a commitment to be part of
this congregation, this religious community. We sign the book, and
there’s a date, a year attached. Another milestone, a point of
reference, a way of measuring where we are at this point in our
lives.
The church itself has milestones. A new building. Additions to the
building. Significant challenges and significant changes. This is
when we were involved in a particular issue. This is when we worked
together on a specific project. This is when we replaced the chairs
in the sanctuary. This was when the pulpit was made—and why. This is
when we changed the orientation of the sanctuary. From pointing
north to pointing east, which is why the speakers are aimed from
what is now the choir loft—and why when I speak from up here, it
sounds like I’m over there. There’s a part of me stuck in that
previous era when the pulpit was someplace else.
Tenures of different ministers provide milestones in congregational
life. It’s during the time of this minister that this happened:
there was this controversy, there was this achievement. It was
during the time this minister was here that there were these
accomplishments, also things tried that just didn’t work.
We keep records of what has occurred from year to year in a
congregation, we write histories. All with the aim of bringing form
to our experience, patterns, meaning. This is what happened; this is
what it has meant; this is what it might mean in the future.
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So what’s my point?
The old milestones—markers placed along a road—told travelers where
they were. That is to say, there were about relationship. They told
the traveler where he or she stood in relationship to the road, in
relationship to the journey he or she was taking.
Same with our milestones. They too are about relationship. They
connect us to a place, where we are now. They relate us to the
passage of time; this is when this occurred in relationship to other
things that have occurred. They relate us to each other because when
we observe milestones, it’s usually in relationship with other
people. We seem to need that. We are more centered and whole when we
are in relationship with place, time, and other people.
Today we observe another milestone. It’s the last of our regular
year services. Next week and throughout the summer, we continue to
meet each Sunday, and there will be programs for children, but there
is a difference between the summer services and what happens the
rest of the year. So we pause this morning, we note the passing of
time, we note the people who are in our lives—right here, right now.
Like a traveler—for we all are travelers—like a traveler pauses when
reaching a stone marker along the road. We pause and reflect upon
the road that brought us here, we wonder about the road ahead. But
mostly we become attentive to where we are now.
And perhaps as we pause attentively at this milestone, we might feel
tinges of a feeling—a feeling of gratitude: an elemental gratitude
that despite the mixture of things going on in our lives—the good
things, the bad things, the things that we worry about—that despite
all that and because of all that, we are here now in this specific
place with these specific fellow travelers.
For that moment, we might recognize what a gift this is. And for
that moment, we are grateful.
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