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PASSION
by John T. Crestwell, Jr.
7/25/04

Many of you have heard the story before…  I went over Will & Rhonda Johnson’s house with Reverend Don and of course we’re supposed to be asking and answering questions about Davies Church but I’m more fascinated by what he has shown me in his basement—his very classic Redskins collection along with other sports memorabilia.  There are pictures, videos, sports cards, jerseys, and all kinds of stuff from many different sporting events, from way back to the present day.  Don and I should have been there an hour or so, but we were there probably four hours—some visitation huh?  And don’t you know I went over again not long ago to eat some BBQ and after long, guess where I was?  Yep.  I was back in the basement in the “Johnson Museum of Sporting History.”  Sharon was with me this time and asked, “How long will you be?”  I said, in the words of Dr. King, “How long?  Not long!”  Three hours later—I managed to go home.   Well, obviously you can tell, I like going over the Johnson’s.

Then, recently, I had a similar experience. My sister and brother-in-law invited Sharon and I over a few weeks ago for a cookout, which was wonderful because there’s more free food to eat—Amen.  Anyway, we get there and the grilled food featured GRILLED STEAKS my sister had marinated for, I don’t know-- two weeks...   The food was great, but the high moment was when my brother-in-law asked me if I wanted to go watch the 1982 NFC Championship game, played at RFK Stadium—The Redskins vs. Cowboys, the beginning of the Joe Gibbs era!  Some of you know what I’m talking about.  He said he got the DVD from a friend who is a ‘Skins fanatic.  Of course I had to watch the game.  Sharon asked me once again as I headed toward the basement in a blissful state, “How long will you be, honey?”  I said, “How long? Not long…”  (Pause)  Three hours and twenty-minutes later I had watched the pre-game, the game, and post-game.  IT WAS GREAT.  I had to hold back the tears more than a few times reminiscing on the good ole days (smile).

I had to ask myself, “John, what is it about the Redskins and sports in general that gets you and so many others so riled up full of so many emotions?”   I’m sure some of you are thinking what Sharon has said to me on a number of occasions, “Yeah, why do you get like that, John? You must be on the payroll? And if you are, there’s something you haven’t told me and…by the way, there are a number of things I need to purchase.”  Oh, the sarcasm never ceases (smile).    But just why do some of us get so emotionally engaged?

Then there’s my obsession with watching E-True Hollywood stories or the show Biography on  A&E.  I love watching the rise and fall of celebrities.  Or reading about great empires and how they came to power or about the Sages and great religious figures in our history that impacted millions.   What is it that attracts us to the “drama”? 

I think there are several things…  First, in some ways we want to live the lives of others; to see or get a glimpse of lifestyles that we may never have the chance to experience.  This is why reality TV has become such a big thing today.  We get to see the craziest things on television for free.  Second, most of us love a good story.  And what is life but a story?  Each of us could write our own books about the highs and lows of stuff that we’ve experienced.  But more than that, we enjoy watching other stories unfold to compare and contrast them with our own lives…  Some of you are thinking, “What do the Redskins have to do with that?”  Okay, since you asked...  With the Redskins and a team sport like football, over the course of a season, you learn about the varying personalities of players.  You learn about their positions, each player’s strengths and weaknesses; the injuries they must battle to overcome.  You watch the coach manage the media or be managed by the media.  Then there’s the off the field scandal the team must deal with.  Don’t forget the thrilling games when your team perseveres in the face of all kinds of obstacles and finds a way to win; and the embarrassing defeats you want to forget because you watched your team give up.  And the fanatics like me watch for years and years and years, there’s a long history, hoping that it will be THE YEAR when an amazing thing occurs in team sport.  A group of individuals bond into a cohesive unit—A TEAM, which is a beautiful thing to see!  It’s like listening to jazz or classical music when all the instruments do their separate parts but it all comes together in a beautiful ensemble or symphony… This is what it’s like when a team comes together…

If you are listening to my sports ramblings this morning and you think I am giving a free pitch advising you to watch NFL football you must have fallen asleep already.  There is something greater.  It is what has us shouting, “USA, USA” during the Olympic Trials and later with the Olympics.  Ultimately, the obsession is personal.  It is our personal passion, an outward expression of excitement from an inward desire to overcome and succeed in life no matter what, no matter the odds or obstacles!  The Sporting events are microcosms that represent the many pieces or facets of our existence and our deep desire to put them into some harmonious flow so that we might experience what some call bliss or the “abundant life.”

Everybody wants, not just live, but to be ALIVE!  Dr. King said, “If a person has not found something he is willing to die for he is not fit to live.”  The deeper message in this thought is that we must seek to be FULLY ALIVE!  So, when some of us watch various sporting events we are watching all of the dramas, the stuff of life, being played out before our eyes!  When you look at the life of the modern and ancient sages like Gandhi, or King, or Buddha, or Lao Tzu, or Muhammad or Jesus, Joseph Priestly or A. Powell Davies, for that matter, you are looking into the lives of people who were fully alive.  They lived the moments, they accepted the defeats and each of them never lost hope for tomorrow even to the end.  This indeed, is living!  This is passion for life!  What is there to live for if we don’t have passion?

Passion is defined is a strong emotion that has an overpowering or compelling effect on an individual or individuals.  Passion is intense emotion, drive, or excitement.  Passion is a word that, in and of itself, is ALIVE.  It is not a passive or stagnant word but it is an active and kinetic word!   Why should we be passionate?  Why should we seek to get the most out of life?

Sharon and I were discussing this point and we came to the conclusion that we have to be…  You see, we are all so fortunate, really lucky that we live in the time and place called the 21st century in America.   Here we are able to articulate our faith, eat all the BBQ we want, go home to air conditioned houses; we live with managing over abundance as Americans,  but the truth is, the majority of the world lives in abject poverty.  As an African American I am very fortunate to be alive right now.  I could have been born 300 years ago or even 100 years ago—born a slave.  By the law of averages, I should have been born into slavery.  I should have been born when it was okay to take me away from my family.    You know, every time I watched Armistad, which was wonderfully produced and directed by the great Steven Spielberg, I cry ever time I see the slave ship scene.  My tears are not just due to the fact that what was done was inhumane, we all know that; but also, because in many ways I am unworthy of the life that I’ve been given.  And so “to whom much is given, much is required.”  “With great freedom comes great responsibility.”

Why are we so lucky to be born after the Dark Ages in Europe or Spanish Inquisition or Salem Witch Trials when people who thought like us and who had special gifts were burned at the stake?  Why are we so fortunate to live when there are medicines to fix our aches and pains and cure diseases that once killed millions?  Why are we so fortunate to have vast technologies at our disposal?  I have come to see how precious my life is.  I have come to see that I’m really unworthy of this life and I am thankful and all I can give back to the evolutionary process are my talents, my gifts, and my passion for life!   What is it that A. Powell Davies said, “…we are a part of a very special religion, etc…”  Then he says, “What are you doing with it?”  That’s a good question.   We are fortunate for the lives we have.  What are we doing with our lives?    How are we living?  Are we living mundane existences?  Are we ALIVE OR just living?  Are we fully engaged in life or just existing?  I’ve told Sharon so many times, I’d rather have 10-years of LIVING over 40 years of just existing.  I want to have fun, experience blissful moments, live my passion and make a difference. 

What are you passionate about?  What keeps you alive?  What’s fun for you? What gives your life meaning and purpose?  How are you using your gifts?  What are you/ we giving back to the Universe for such a happening that we call human life?  Dick Hess came up to me a few weeks ago, full of passion.  He said, “John, I’ve finally realized what I am!”  I said, “Great!  What are you?”  He said, “I’m an Existentialist!”  I said, “Great.  What’s that?” (smile).  No, I’m kidding I know a bit about it…  Anyhow, it was as if Kennedy said to me, “Babby, I know what I want to be when I grow up.”  He had that energy and he was full of passion about his discovery.  He was alive!  It was as if he had found his calling.

I had a dream when I was 16 years old.  In the dream I was leading people somewhere.   It was a very vivid dream where my group had to fight the evil forces.  As you can see, I had a very vivid imagination.  Anyhow, we won the battle.  There’s more detail to the dream, but some weeks later, I shared the dream with my mom and also with my aunt who was visiting and my aunt said, “Oh my!   You are going to be a preacher.”  That was the first time I thought about being a minister.  Over the years, in the Methodist church I grew up in, I heard preacher after preacher say, “Young man, you’re going to be a preacher one day.”  It stuck in my mind and I began to say, “Hey, I’m going to be a preacher one day.”  I took this belief all the way through college but it was not until a very personal experience that I truly realized, “Yes, I really do want to be a minister.”  Of course, if they all knew I would become a Unitarian Universalist preacher they’d probably never said that.  Hello…  The point is, I heard them say that to me but it was not until it was personal, when I developed the individual passion that I began to pursue this path.  So there are many paths but the path you choose must be the path YOU choose.   It’s not mommas dream or daddy’s dream or grandma’s dream, or your deceased parents dream.  Finding your bliss, no matter your age, finding your place in the universe, no matter your stage in life—is a personal journey.  As it is said, “A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still;” or better stated, “…to thine own self be true!”  Only you know what’s good for you—only you.

You all know I love Joseph Campbell and he says, “…follow your bliss and don’t be afraid of it.  Slay the dragon in you that holds you back.  If the work you are doing is the work you chose to do because you enjoy it—that’s it! Wonderful!   Campbell goes on to say, “But, if you think, “Oh, no!  I couldn’t do that.”   “No, I can’t be a writer.  No, I can’t do this or that--that’s the mythological dragon in your mind locking you in.”  He’s talking about those mental demons that keep us from being fully alive.  And I have found that it is in the attempt at achieving our success with the triumph and tragedy and the risk that we truly understand what it means live, and to take advantage of the special life we have been given.  As Davies revealed to us today in the reading, it is having the courage to face our dreams and the potential failure of those dreams that we stand in the face of a great opportunity to experience BLISS.  But Davies tells us that it does not always happen.  “Not all souls find the same courage.”   

No matter the outcome, when you follow your bliss, whether it is something big or small, you are doing great soul work!  You might want to be a professional gardener or singer, or actress, or writer or the best stay at home mom there ever was, or artist or musician, or politician or president.  Whatever you choose to do, it is good that you have chosen a path.  It says that you appreciate the gift of life and the gifts you have, and that you are an active partaker, and not a passive participant in life.  There is a difference. 

As a sidebar, when you look at our growth initiative we’ve taken on as a church, this is an active plan. It is alive.  It is rooted in helping people find our doors and perhaps if their passion is asleep we can be the family that embraces them or the church that awakens them igniting the flame in their hearts!   Our plan is full of passion and hope and courage—the stuff of life!  And we should never look at it as work.  It is LIVING.  It’s not a mundane process.  It’s not something you agonize over; it is something to be excited about, something fun.  Making new friends, changing people’s lives for the better is never commonplace.

All of this passion talk RESONATES in me very deeply as a Unitarian Universalist.  For we believe in an end to all social, political and religious exclusions and an end to those barriers that divide and separate us as human beings.  In substance, “Humanity you are free to live!”  At the very core of who we are, there is a corporate message for all people that says in substance, “Responsibly live your bliss.  Live your passion!”   We understand the sacred circle and how precious the human race is in this very brief evolutionary cycle.  And so we must, if we can, or if you want—carve out your little place in the universe.

As I move toward concluding, it is not always possible to do what we want when we want.  Many of us have responsibilities that weigh us down like anchors.  Often times it seems difficult or impossible to walk away from what we’ve built—the lifestyle, the responsibilities, etc…  Let’s say you are a corporate executive making lots & lots of money (don’t I wish), but you REALLY want to be a professional Gardener.  Just how can you do that?  Is there time?  So, the cost must be counted and the sacrifice must be measured to see if it’s feasible.   Perhaps there is a middle path where you can live your passion?  I cannot prescribe the answer that will lead you to your “promised land”, so to speak, but what I can say is I think we live too often in other people’s realities.  I don’t want to contradict myself but what I mean is it is fine if you want to be a fanatic about team sports; and it’s fine if you like reality TV or A&E or what have you.  But ultimately, you are your best story.  The life you lead is the best story.  Your story will impact your life for the better and could quite possibly make a difference in others’ lives.  So, while you may fantasize over someone else’s life—think about your story.   Then ask yourself:  “What more can I do?”  If you are already where you want to be, then obviously this message is not for you.  But I’m referring to myself and to others who feel there is something more within them that can be REALIZED and then UTILIZED!

Ruth Phillips wrote about her family in the first edition of Freedom Xpress.  If you read what she wrote you can clearly see that her message is about being fully alive; a participant in life; not being afraid to live, have a little fun, and accepting the tribulations, sorrows, and failures that come with living.  But in the midst of it all, finding a way to “Look up, and laugh, and love, and lift.”   I’d like to read the words of the hymn she quoted in her article as I close. An old hymn, titled “I Would Be True…”

“I WOULD BE TRUE, FOR THERE ARE THOSE WHO TRUST ME; I WOULD BE PURE, FOR THERE ARE THOSE WHO CARE; I WOULD BE STRONG, FOR THERE IS MUCH TO SUFFER; I WOULD BE BRAVE, FOR THERE IS MUCH TO DARE; I WOULD BEFRIEND ALL—THE FOE, THE FRIENDLESS; I WOULD BE GIVING, AND FORGET THE GIFT; I WOULD BE HUMBLE, FOR I KNOW MY WEAKNESS;

I WOULD LOOK UP, AND LAUGH, AND LOVE, AND LIFT!”

Find your bliss. Create your own story.  Live your passion and all the while try to “look up, and laugh, and love, and lift!  That is the message this morning.  Let it be so.  Amen.

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