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By Dr. Bruce T. Marshall
January 2, 2011
Reading:
It Matters
I knew a man who had printed on his stationery this proverb:
“Nothing is settled. Everything matters.” It established a certain
ambience for reading his letters, as if to say: what you are about
to read is to be taken seriously, but is not final.
I remember him and his proverb sometimes, especially when it seems
impossible to change the world or myself in any significant way.
Times like the beginnings of new years.
“Sorry, Jim,” I say. “It’s not true that nothing is settled. In the
past year choices have been made, losses have been suffered, there
have been growth and decay, there have been commitments and
betrayals. None of that can be undone. A year ago no one knew
whether during this year one person would become pregnant, another
would get cancer, another would take a new job, another would have
an accident, but now it is settled.
“One day this year I was present just when someone needed me;
another day I was busy doing something else when I was needed. One
day I said something to a friend that injured our relationship;
another day I said something that enabled a person to see life in a
new way. The best and the worst of those days is now written. All my
tears, of joy or sorrow, cannot erase it.”
If I stay with my meditation long enough, the reply comes. “Robbie,”
says Jim, “You have misunderstood the proverb. It is true that you
cannot escape the consequences of your actions or the chances of the
world. But what is not settled is how the story turns out. What is
not settled is what the meaning of your life will be.”
The meaning of a life is not contained within one act, or one day,
or one year. As long as you are alive the story of your life is
still being told, and the meaning is still open. As long as there is
life in the world, the story of the world is still being told. What
is done is done but nothing is settled.
And if nothing is settled, then everything matters. Every choice,
every act in the new year matters. Every word, every deed is making
the meaning of your life and telling the story of the world.
Everything matters in the year coming, and, more important,
everything matters today.
Robert T. Walsh
Noisy Stones
Sermon:
The Old Testament tells the story of the Israelite people who
endured suffering and humiliation during years of slavery in Egypt.
Then God chose Moses to gather his people and empower them to break
free from bondage. Moses offered his people a vision: a land of milk
and honey where they would live free.
The people of Israel rose up in rebellion, challenged their
taskmasters, fought and fled, crossed the Red Sea just in time—and
then entered the Promised Land, right? Well, no. There was a little
delay. They wandered in the wilderness. They wandered, and they
wandered. According to the Bible, they wandered for 40 years before
entering the Promised Land, but in Biblical texts, the number 40 is
not exact but a designation of a really long time. So it was for a
really long time that the children of Israel remained in the limbo
condition between slavery and the Promised Land. Moses, himself,
never made it. Even though the Bible tells us that he lived to a
ripe old age of 120, he spent the rest of his life wandering. He
never realized his vision of entering the Promised Land.
I remember hearing this account in Sunday School when I was a child
and thinking, “What kind of story is this?” Moses goes through all
this trouble to find freedom, does battle with the pharaoh’s troops,
risks life and limb, pulls off a last-minute escape only to…wander
for 40 years?! That’s not how it would happen in the movies. In the
movies—after all the drama—Moses would lead the Israelites into the
Promised Land to cheers and tears of joy, and the credits would
roll.
And what kind of religious story is this? Why do we tell it over and
over? What’s the lesson: that our reward for answering God’s call is
frustration? Getting lost in the wilderness? I can find wilderness
on my own quite easily, thank you very much. Why do we keep
returning to a story that reminds us how discouraging our attempts
to get anywhere can be?
It wasn’t until years later—something like 40 years later—that I
thought it through again. Maybe, I thought, maybe this period of
wandering in the wilderness isn’t wasted time. Maybe it’s an
important part of the story. Maybe something happens during those 40
years that’s key to the outcome. In the Bible, it is said that the
reason for all this wandering is the habit of these chosen people to
behave badly—to disobey God and go off on their own trips.
But maybe this story is not just about disobedience and the
punishments of a God inclined toward retribution—maybe it’s also
about what was created in this people as they wandered in the
wilderness: that yearning for freedom, that yearning to be masters
of their own fate. Maybe it’s about the sense of being a people that
can be created in a community when they face a time of hardship and
challenge together. Yes, that story began with an escape from
bondage, but the reason for that escape needed to be developed
during those 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
● ● ●
Today is day two of the 2011 season of New Year’s resolutions. Those
resolutions we made yesterday on New Year’s Day or the night before
on New Year’s Eve—are something around 24 hours old. How’s it going
so far?
In case you might have forgotten any of yours, maybe this will jog
your memory: here’s a review of the top ten New Year’s resolutions,
starting with number 10.
In 10th place among New Year’s resolutions is: Get organized. Put
away the stuff that has accumulated in our homes—in our lives. Get
everything neat and tidy. Start the year with clean surfaces.
In 9th place: Volunteer and help others. The holidays stimulate our
desire to be of service. This resolution encourages us to extend
that holiday spirit into the new year. Number 8 is: Learn something
new. Give mind and body a jolt of energy and purpose.
Number 7 among New Year’s resolutions: Find a better job. Well,
maybe it’s out there, and maybe it isn’t. But we won’t know until we
go out looking. In 6th place: Quit smoking. I didn’t know there were
that many smokers still out there, but apparently there are
sufficient numbers to secure the number 6 spot for this resolution.
Resolution #5: Find my soul mate. Ah, if it were that easy. Among
the ten this is the one that we probably have the least control
over, but maybe this year, just maybe. Which brings us to # 4: Enjoy
more quality time with family and friends. I’ve always thought that
the goal of creating “quality time” involves wishful thinking. We
can set aside time with family and friends, but it may or may not
turn out to be “quality” time.
Resolutions #3 and #2 are related to each other and perhaps reflects
the continued uncertainty of the economy. These are: Pay off debts.
And: Make a budget and stick to it.
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This brings us to #1. The top New Year’s resolution. This one is an
old favorite. Hasn’t budged from the top spot for years. It is: Lose
weight and get into better physical shape.
All ten of these are fine resolutions. They represent worthy
aspirations. Except that we almost never follow through. I would
dearly love to be organized, have a working budget, and reserve
large blocks of quality time, but I manage these only in fits and
starts. When the next new year rolls around, I’m in about the same
place I was in the previous one. So let’s say you’re Moses. It’s the
beginning of whatever year it was—back in BC times when they counted
years backwards rather than forward—and you make your list of New
Year’s resolutions.
You, as Moses, write down your #1 New Year’s Resolution: Lose weight
and get into better physical shape. (Some things don’t change.) And
then number 2: Cross the Jordan River and enter the Promised Land,
finally.
Maybe Moses will do better this year on resolution number one. Maybe
he’ll finally address that nagging weight problem, start jogging,
lift weights, stuff like that. But we already know that he’s going
nowhere with #2: entering the Promised Land. Does that mean the
resolution will be a failure?
No. For time spent in the wilderness has value in itself. It’s in
the wilderness that we find out who we are, what we are made of,
what we truly value. It’s in the wilderness that we come face to
face with the question, "What am I looking for?” Truly, what am I
looking for?
● ● ●
Chances are, you are in some kind of wilderness as you anticipate
the year, 2011. Chances are, you find yourself in an environment or
set of circumstances in which you don’t entirely know where you
are—or how to find a path through or how to get out.
Maybe your wilderness is a difficult personal issue. Maybe it’s a
challenge at work. Maybe it’s a health concern. Maybe you have
worries about your family. Maybe you’re not quite sure where your
life is headed. Maybe you feel a little lost and don’t know why.
Maybe it’s several or these or maybe it’s something else.
I expect that most of us in anticipating 2011 hope for a year in
which things go well, an easy year, a year without big problems and
challenges, a year in which there are no unpleasant surprises. Most
of us hope for that, but most of us won’t get it. There will be
things in this next year that are not easy—there will be problems
and challenges. There will be projects that we try that don’t work,
there might be some outright failures. We don’t want to know that,
but we do know that. We’re likely to make progress on some
challenges with which we are faced, but we won’t get through all the
wildernesses in which we find ourselves, no matter how many
resolutions to the contrary we might make.
Knowing that, what are we looking for?
Here’s what I want to suggest, and it takes us back to that reading
with which I began. What I want to suggest is that what we’re
looking for—no matter how the actual events play out, no matter
whether we happen to make progress on our resolutions or not—what
we’re looking for is meaning. That we be engaged in struggles that
matter. Maybe they matter on a personal level, maybe on a family or
community level, maybe on a global level. What’s important is that
we be involved in something that has meaning to us, that makes a
difference.
What am I looking for? I’m looking for sermons that are easy to
write and never keep me up half the night trying to figure out what
I had in mind when I submitted this title to the newsletter several
weeks before. That’s what I’m looking for, but it’s not going to
happen. The process of sermon writing proceeds on its own time. And
really, what matters is not how easy it is. What matters is that it
still feels important to try to get it right, to try to convey
something that has worth and value to those of you who are kind
enough and patient enough to devote this time on a Sunday to be here
and listen.
What are you looking for if you are a member of the Davies board of
trustees? Well, you might be looking for a year without difficulties
in which the money flows freely and nobody has a problem with
anything that’s going on.
It’s probably not going to happen. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty
sure it’s not going to happen. And it shouldn’t happen that way
either. I know of some Unitarian Universalist churches—most of them
old, with large endowments and located in New England—in which the
“no struggle” scenario has been pretty much the rule, and those
churches are losing members and energy and may well be dying.
Because the meaning is not in running a smooth operation; the
meaning is in the struggle.
In whatever concerns you may be facing—personal issues, health
concerns, financial problems, issues with your work—I hope you have
an easy and productive year. I truly hope that you do. But if it
doesn’t work out that way, then I hope you are able to find meaning
in the struggles you encounter. You know when burnout occurs in work
or even in relationships? Burnout is not a function of how hard you
work. Burnout occurs when you are working hard—or even working an
average amount—and it doesn’t seem to matter. When there is no
meaning. That’s when people get burned out.
What is this “meaning” I’m talking about? What’s the meaning we
encounter while trying to find our way? One kind of meaning has to
do with the personal relationships that develop a new depth in times
of struggle or the sense of community among those who share the
experience together. Another kind of meaning has to do with the
sense that even if you are not entirely successful, you are engaged
in a struggle that matters—and the maybe your efforts can help move
things just a bit in the directions you desire. Another kind of
meaning has to do with the experience that you are upholding values
important to you—affirming human worth and dignity, to name one.
Another kind of meaning comes from engaging in a difficult time
while retaining your own sense of dignity, doing this as well as you
can, even if you are not ultimately successful. Yet another kind of
meaning comes from the faith that what I do today might make a
contribution to those who come after, that even if I am not
successful, my efforts might move things a long a little in the
directions I believe in.
If we can project ourselves into the state mind of the people of
Israel in their time spent wandering through the wilderness
thousands of years ago, what kept them alive was the conviction that
this struggle had meaning. It mattered enough not to return to
slavery in Egypt. It mattered enough to keep them going despite
those 40 years of not achieving their goal of entering the Promised
Land.
● ● ●
What are you looking for as a person? What are you looking for, as a
congregation. This is a “looking-for” kind of year here at Davies
Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church. You are looking for a new
settled minister. What are you looking for in this person? For one,
you are looking for someone with a set of skills that enables him or
her to do this work. There are skills in ministry which different
people have to different degrees. You have a very good search
committee that is working very hard to evaluate the skills of those
who have applied for the position here at Davies. That’s their job;
they are doing it well.
That doesn’t mean that the rest of us sit around and wait. As I have
pointed out before, this congregation has tasks to do in preparation
for the next ministry, tasks that help prepare the ground. So
efforts have been made to open up the congregation, make it easier
for new people to become involved. We have welcomed new members. We
have worked at making the procedures and decision-making of the
congregation more transparent. We have entered into a mission and
vision process. We have examined the committee structure and the
role of each in the church. We have solidified the finances, put the
church on more solid financial ground. We have made repairs and
improvements on the building. We have made sure that there is a
strong religious education program for all of our children. We’ve
been busy during this interim time between settled ministries.
This is also a time, I think, to be aware of this question—What are
you looking for?—in terms of ministry.
During Christmas vacation, one of our children asked me, “What do
you look for in a relationship?” “What does it take for a
relationship that lasts?” She’s our youngest and, at age 22, has
seen her share of relationships come together and then apart. Since
ministry is also about relationship, my response to her question
wasn’t that different from my response to the question of what to
look for in a minister.
The most important thing in a relationship, I said to my daughter,
is the ability to talk. Someone you can talk with about
everything—not just the small things, not just the big
things—everything. And not just that you can talk, but that you like
to talk with each other. That you enjoy each other’s company.
I told her that equality in a relationship was important. Not that
each be equally good at everything, but that there be a sharing of
responsibilities so each contributes something. Be careful, I
warned, of anyone who wants to save you. And be careful if you feel
that you have it in you to save somebody else. Nobody can save
anybody else.
I told her that it is important that she find someone who respects
her and someone who she respects. Somebody who believes in her and
will celebrate her achievements. Someone with whom she feels strong,
capable, able to address the challenges and struggles that present
themselves.
You don’t need somebody who will make it easy for you all the time.
Indeed, it doesn’t hurt to have a partner who will sometimes
challenge you, urge you to take the next necessary steps that come
before you.
I also think you need someone who is kind, with whom you feel good
about yourself. And there has to be some passion—however you define
it, however you experience it. A lasting relationship needs passion.
A final thing I told her: let yourself be open to a surprise.
Sometimes the person you envision as being “the one” isn’t. But
someone else comes along who doesn’t look the part—and yet, with
this person you feel that you can be yourself, that you can be
yourself at your best. Let yourself be surprised by the person who
turns up to be the one who accompanies you through the wildernesses
of your life.
There’s a story from the Jewish tradition,
“Once several members of a congregation had become helplessly lost
in a dense forest. They were delighted when unexpectedly they came
upon their rabbi who was also wandering through the woods. They
implored, ‘Master, we are lost! Please show us the way out of the
forest.”
“The rabbi replied. ‘I don’t know the way out either, but I do know
which paths lead nowhere. I will show the ways that won’t work, then
perhaps together we can discover the ones that do.” (Sheldon Kopp
from Blues Ain’t Nothing but a Good Soul Feeling Bad.)
● ● ●
President John F. Kennedy once said, “Do not pray for easy lives.
Pray to be stronger people.” He said that, but the line was written
for him by his chief speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, who was a
Unitarian. I just wrote about the Sorensen/Kennedy relationship for
the coming newsletter so it’s on my mind. And it strikes me as a
fitting conclusion to a sermon about “What are you looking for? What
are we looking for?”
Not easy lives. But the opportunity to become stronger people.
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