Unexpected Connections

"The art of conversation is the art of hearing, as well as being heard."

-- William Hazlitt

Opening Words: from Singing the Living Tradition #434

May we be reminded here of our highest aspirations,

and inspired to bring our gifts of love and service

to the altar of humanity.

May we know once again that we are not isolated beings

But connected, in mystery and miracle, to the universe,

to this community and to each other.

Meditation: attributed to Black Elk of the Oglala Sioux tribe

Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle.

The sky is round and I have heard the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars.

The wind in its greatest power, whirls.

Birds make their nests in circles for theirs is the same religion as ours.

The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle.

The moon does the same, and both are round.

Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing,

and always come back again to where they were.

The life of a [person] is a circle from childhood to childhood,

and so it is in everything where power moves.

Reading: by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler from Connected – The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives

Given our research and our own diverse experiences in life – from meeting our spouses to meeting each other, from caring for terminally ill patients to building latrines in poor villages – we believe that our connections to other people [matter], and that by linking the study of individuals to the study of groups, the science of social networks can explain a lot about human experience… [Our connections make] us uniquely human. To know who we are, we must understand how we are connected…

Our connections affect every aspect of our daily lives… How we feel, what we know, when we marry, whether we fall ill, how much money we make, and whether we vote all depend on the ties that bind us. Social networks spread happiness, generosity, and love. They are always there, exerting both subtle and dramatic influence over our choices, actions, thoughts, feelings, even our desires. And our connections do not end with the people we know. Beyond our own social horizons, friends of friends of friends can start chain reactions that eventually reach us, like waves from distant lands that wash up on our shores.

Reading: by Christina Baldwin from Calling the Circle – The First and Future Culture (p. 25)

[Baldwin imagines the First Culture of humanity as concentric circles of interconnection. She writes:] deep in my cells, I remember the first circle.

Many, many thousands of years ago, when we captured the spark of fire and began to carry the embers of warmth and cooking and light along with us from site to site, fire brought new experience into being. Coming in from the [grasslands] where we had been wandering in small […] groups we found shelter in caves and crevasses and brought the safety of the light with us. The fire warded off predators, cooked the meats and roasted the roots and nuts that were our staple diet. With the flame, we could provide more food, extend the safety, sustain more people.

We made a circle around the flame and started to face each other. We came into circle because fire led us there. Struggling to keep warm, struggling to keep safe, it made sense to put fire in the center. A circle allowed space for each person to face the flame, to take place. As a member of a fire circle, we each could claim a place of warmth and a piece of food…

When I see someone again and again in the firelight, the fire becomes symbolic of our connection; I see a spark in the other. Perhaps as we first faced each other across the shimmering circle of light, we were able to envision the spark of the Sacred in each other’s eyes. We wondered about our place in the larger circle of the earth and sky, in the community of creation.

Reading: by feminist peace activist Starhawk from Dreaming the Dark

Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.

Unexpected Connections

A Sermon Delivered on January 29, 2012

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

“Connections, connections, connections.” That’s what my father would always say to me. “Connections, connections, connections, Axel!” Part mantra, part entreaty, part demand. The words always hurled at me with a fierce urgency.

Throughout the last years of his life, my father suffered from aphasia, a language disorder, which interferes with the ability to understand and use words correctly. My father could hear and he could speak, but most of the time the meaning of words heard and spoken was jumbled. Except for certain key phrases he could express reliably, which had assumed a special place in his mind, because of their centrality and significance.

When my father looked me hard in the eye, often grabbing me by the arm, and said “connections, connections, connections,” it was part of his parental effort to convey what to him was a critical ingredient of professional success as he understood it: to make connections with colleagues and co-workers near and far, and to establish a place for myself in his “old boys network,” the network of liberal religious professionals he had spent a life-time negotiating. My father was a minister, too.

Ever since I graduated high school, he had been trying to persuade me to make connections. And for as long as I can remember, I stubbornly resisted his efforts. I resisted cultivating the kind of connections he had in mind.

I was interested in connections, but a different kind of connection. At the time I couldn’t quite describe what it was I had in mind. It was a quality of connection I had experienced sometimes with friends. Sometimes in the evening, in a quiet corner, undisturbed, sharing a pot of hot tea, and talking from the heart. Sometimes on a long walk together, heading nowhere in particular, lost in conversation, hardly aware of the streets we crossed. It was a rare sense of presence, and authenticity, and trust, and understanding.

* * *

To this day, I remember that quality of connection I discovered as a young man. And I value it, to this day. It is an experience worth recapturing or recreating. But doing so is not easy.

Life has gotten a lot busier. Juggling work schedules and family schedules and school schedules. In our home, Elaine, the kids and I, once had a habit of gathering for dinner almost every evening, to connect. Now that time seems long past, and more often than not we are squeezing dinner in between late afternoon and evening meetings, or after school programs and the social commitments of our teenagers.

More often than not, when we do settle down for a meal at our round kitchen table, we are each tired, and scattered, and rushed in our own ways. Connecting is a challenge.

* * *

And yet, on some level, making connections is completely unnecessary. Not because we don’t need connections – we need them. Not because we can live perfectly well in isolation – we can’t. No, making connections is unnecessary, because we already are connected.

This is the point Christakis and Fowler make. Their research shows, whether we know it or not, our connections affect every aspect of our lives. Whether we like it or not, our thoughts and feelings, our decisions and our desires are shaped by the social network within which we live. “We can be deeply affected by events we do not witness that happen to people we do not know.”

For instance, a ten-year study showed how a sense of loneliness can spread in a social network. It turns out loneliness is contagious. If someone directly connected to you is feeling very lonely, you yourself are 52 percent more likely to feel lonely. If there is a second degree of separation between the two of you – if a friend of your friend is lonely – you are still 25 percent more likely to feel lonely, too. And if it is a friend of a friend of a friend, who is lonely, you are still 15 percent more likely to feel lonely.

As Nicholas Christakis puts it, it is “like pulling a single thread could unravel a sweater, a lonely person could destabilize and entire social network, spreading loneliness to others…” (“You’re lonely, I’m lonely,” by Gregory Jones, Christian Century, 1/26/10)

But just as we are affected, we ourselves can affect others. Through our networks, we are influenced by hundreds or even thousands of people. But by the same token we influence them. We can be a source of happiness, generosity and love. We can infect people with kindness. We can create an outbreak of hope. We can transmit a spirit of compassion to thousands . This is especially true when we take an active role in shaping our social networks. We do this all the time.

Usually we have habit of associating with people who are like us. As Christakis and Fowler put it, “Whether it’s Hells Angels or Jehovah’s Witnesses, drug addicts or coffee drinkers, Democrats or Republicans, stamp collectors or bungee jumpers, the truth is that we seek out those people who share our interests our histories, and dreams. Birds of a feather flock together.” But this is a habit we have the capacity to transcend.

We can also choose the shape of our social networks. We can decide how many people we are connected to – whether we want one partner for a game of chess, or many partners for game of charades. And we can decide where we want to be within this network. Do we want to be right in the middle, the life of the party, or do we want to be on the sidelines? The kind of networks we create, and the place we take within them makes a big difference.

* * *

On one level there is no need to make connections, because we already are connected. We are connected to people we know and people we don’t know. We are connected to the world in ways we can’t even imagine. The notion that we are isolated and that we are separate is an illusion. This insight has been conveyed by sages and mystics of all great religions.

Christina Baldwin shares this understanding. She writes,

“We have been lied to, have been told we are separate from the rest of creation, that humankind is set apart. We are not. The atoms of this planet are all the same. If we break ourselves down, break our cells down – the skin, the bones, the muscles, the soft tissues – at the atomic level we cannot tells ourselves apart. We are every body: the bird’s tail, the oak tree’s leaf, the rock in the roadway, the dog’s fur, the water running in a brook. My body is the same as your body. Behold – we are one. We know this.” (p. 59)

We are not isolated beings, but connected, in mystery and miracle, to the universe, to this community and to each other.

And yet the experience of isolation is real. Despite the fact that our cities are growing more crowded, despite the fact that the internet provides an abundance of avenues for connection – whether through Facebook or YouTube or plain email, despite the fact that millions of us carry cell phones in our pockets, which allow us to connect any time and any place, to talk or text or tweet – despite all of this, according to a study by the University of Michigan, at any given time, 20% of our population feels unhappily isolated.

On one level we are connected. But on another level we are increasingly isolated and lonely. A survey in 1985 asked Americans how many confidents they had, how many people they could call up when they were feeling lonely or depressed, or if they had good personal news to share. In 1985 the most common answer was three. When the same survey was conducted nineteen years later in 2004, the most common answer was zero. (“Loneliness Can Kill You,” by Monte Burke, Forbes, 8/24/09)

* * *

Spiritually and biologically isolation may be an illusion. But on the human interpersonal level, it is a reality, which is growing more pervasive.

But we have the capacity to reverse this trend. We have the power to move from isolation to connection. We have the power to move from loneliness to community.

Christina Baldwin envisions our earliest and most essential community as a circle. A circle around a fire. A circle of safety and sustenance. A circle of connection.

She says, “The need to literally make a circle is essential.” There is a physical dynamic, a magic in creating a circle.

“Even when our minds have forgotten the power of the circle, our bodies remember,” she says. “The circle gives us time to notice who’s here, to greet each other, say names, get comfortable. As the circle gathers, thoughts of family, work, home, and other details are still on our minds. We need to arrive… The circle begins with some ritual which draws a boundary that says: Now. Here. Come into the body of the moment.” (p. 102)

“Imagine being in a circle where we have gathered comfortably together and calmed ourselves from the rush of our daily concerns… Imagine being in a circle where men and women allow each other to finish their thoughts without interrupting; where we listen to what is being said rather than planning rebuttal…. [Imagine listening and trusting] that when it is our turn to speak, we will be able to draw forth the words we want.” (p. 81, 82)

A circle fosters connection between the people present, and more. The circle reminds those present of a connection with something within and beyond them. Something sacred, that might be symbolized by the flame. Baldwin calls it Spirit.

* * *

Creating a circle is an idea worth putting into practice. And, in fact, that is just what we do in our so-called Chalice Circles here at church. They are small groups that meet for two hours a month to intentionally foster a deeper sense of community.

The format is deceptively simple. For most groups it’s this: six to ten people gather in a circle, a candle is lit, a few opening words are shared. Then each person present has an opportunity to check in, and say a few words about their day or their current state of mind. Then an open conversation begins about a relevant topic of common concern. When the time is up, each person offers a final thought, a few closing words are read, and the candle is blown out. That’s it.

It doesn’t seem like much. But experience has shown that these simple gatherings are amazingly effective. They really do create an atmosphere of attentiveness, and trust, and authenticity, and understanding. I am not sure why, but they work.

Maybe it’s because lighting a candle at the beginning is a ritual which draws a boundary, leaving outside the distractions of our busy days, so that within the circle, we can be more fully present. We can speak more clearly and listen more closely.

Maybe it’s because the candle, or the chalice we light, reminds us of that primordial fire around which our ancestors gathered long ago. The flame that symbolized safety, sustenance, and support. The flame that burned through the night and allowed us to see the faces of the others in the circle, and in the eyes of others, recognize the spark of a living spirit that binds each to all. A spirit which we know moves within us, and all creation.

Emerson called this spirit the Oversoul. “Within us is the soul of the whole,” Emerson said, “the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.” There is a deep power in which we exist, which is accessible to us. Every moment we feel invaded by it is memorable.

* * *

“Connections, connections, connections,” my father used to say. And his words still echo in my mind. And I cherish them. I cherish them, not because I ever came around to his vision of professional networking. Nope. I cherish them, because I remember our moments together when he grabbed me by the arm – especially in the last years of his life when communication was more of challenge, and when most of the year we spent on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean – I remember the moments when he and I did connect. Moments when we were both undistracted and fully present. When we each spoke from the heart with passion, with authenticity and trust. Moments when – even though words often failed us – there was real understanding.

* * *

Community is a circle. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. A circle of hands open to receive us, and eyes that light up as we enter. Community is where we can speak with passion, without having the words catch in our throats.

May we each do our part

To create communities of connection.

May we do our part to spread a spirit of kindness and compassion,

That all people might find safety and sustenance and support

Within the circle of life, that embraces us all.

Amen.

And Now for the Good News

"It behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Opening Words:

Let us gather for worship mindful of the words of Mark Morrison-Reed, who wrote:

The central task of religious community

Is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all…

Once felt, it inspires us to act for justice.

It is the church that assures us

that we are not struggling for justice on our own…

[Our] community is essential,

for alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen,

and our strength is too limited to do all that must be done.

Together, our vision widens and our strength is renewed.

Meditation: by Mary Oliver a poem entitled “Mysteries, Yes”

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds will

never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.

Reading: by Edwin Markham, who was Oregon’s poet laureate in the 1920s. This is from a poem entitled “Earth is Enough.” It begins: “We men [and women] of earth have here the stuff of paradise – we have enough!” The rest of the poem is set to music in one of our hymns (Singing the Living Tradition, #312). It goes:

Here on the paths of every day

Here on the common human way

Is all the stuff the gods would take

To build a heaven, to mold and make

New Edens. Ours the task sublime

To build eternity in time.

We need no other stones to build

The temple of the unfulfilled

No other ivory for the doors

No other marble for the floors

No other cedar for the beam

And dome of our eternal dream.

Reading: a story from the Hindu tradition (Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart, edited by Feldman and Kornfield, p. 292)

There was a man who wandered throughout the world seeking his deepest desire. He wandered from one city to another, from one realm to another looking for fulfillment and happiness, but in all his wanderings never came to it. Finally one day, tired from his search, he sat down underneath a great tree at the foot of a mountain. What he did not know is that this was The Great Wish Fulfilling Tree. Whatever one wishes for when seated underneath it immediately becomes true.

As he rested in his weariness he thought to himself, “What a beautiful spot this is. I wish I had a home here,” and instantly before his eyes a lovely home appeared. Surprised and delighted he thought further, “Ah, if only I had a partner to be here with me, then my happiness would be complete,” and in a moment a beautiful [partner] appeared calling him “husband” and beckoning to him. “Well, first, I am hungry,” he thought. “I wish there was food to eat.” Immediately a banquet table appeared covered with every wonderful kind of food and drink, main courses, pastries, sweets of every variety. The man sat down and began to feast himself hungrily, but partway through the meal, still feeling tired he thought, “I wish I had a servant to serve me the rest of this food,” and sure enough a […] servant appeared.

Finishing the meal the man sat back down to lean against this wonderful tree and began to reflect, “How amazing it is that everything I wish has come true. There is some mysterious force about this tree. I wonder if there is a demon who lives in it,” and sure enough no sooner than he thought this than a great demon appeared. “Oh my,” he thought, “this demon will probably eat me up,” and that is just what it did.

Reading: an anecdote from the Hassidic Jewish tradition (Tales of Hasidim – Book Two: The Later Masters, by Martin Buber, p.303)

Where does God live? – When Rabbi Yitzhak Meir was a little boy his mother once took him to see the maggid of Koznitz. There someone said to him: “Yitzhak Meir, I’ll give you a gulden if you tell me where God lives!” He replied: “And I’ll give you two gulden if you tell me where he doesn’t!.”

And Now for the Good News

A Sermon Delivered on January 22, 2012

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

“Houston, we have a problem.” This is what one of the three astronauts on board Apollo 13 said when speaking with ground control on April 14, 1970. At the time the rocket was on the third day of its journey to the moon, about 200,000 miles away from earth. A few moments earlier, one of their oxygen tanks had exploded, and the astronauts were in serious trouble. They’d heard a loud bang, the power in the capsule suddenly fluctuated erratically, and their thruster rockets started firing. Initially they thought they had been hit be a freak meteor.

Amazingly, despite the serious damage to their spacecraft, limited power, loss of cabin heat, water shortage, computer troubles, and navigational challenges, the rocket did not crash, nor did it spin out of control, sending its passengers into outer space.

Thanks to the incredible ingenuity of the crew, both in the capsule and on the ground, they were able to cope with all of their technical failures, as they became evident, improvising solutions. For instance, the ground crew anticipated that rising carbon dioxide levels would become an issue, threatening the astronauts’ survival. So a team of engineers on the ground came up with a plan how the crew could cope, by building their own ad hoc air filtering system which involved jury-rigging extra air filter canisters with some card board, plastic bags and tape they had in the capsule. Following the ground crew’s instructions was like building a model airplane, one astronaut said. They called their contraption “the mailbox.” It wasn’t pretty to look at, but it did the trick.

Given the craft’s trajectory and damage when the oxygen tank exploded, there was no way they could simply turn around, and fly 200,000 miles back to earth. So instead they continued on toward the moon, and once they were within reach of its gravitational field, they used the moon’s gravity as a kind of slingshot, to send them back to the earth. Amazingly, they reached earth, and safely splashed down into the South Pacific three days later on April 17.

The fate of Apollo 13 was quite a story. And because it was a good story, it was made into a movie in 1995, starring Tom Hanks. It made a tidy sum at the box office, and got pretty good reviews. And to tell you the truth, it was Tom Hanks, playing James Lovell, who delivered the memorable line, “Houston, we have a problem.” In real life, what was said was “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” And it was said by Lovell’s co-pilot, Jack Swigert.

* * *

We humans love to tell stories. We love to listen to stories. In fact, we make sense of our lives, through the stories we know.

Our stories speak of challenges we must overcome, and dilemmas we must resolve. They speak of guilt and redemption, of fear and courage, of loneliness and love. Good stories have a message and moral. And while not all stories have a happy end, every good story offers a distinct perspective on the meaning of life.

The story of Apollo 13 has all of these elements, but above all it seems to be the story of a problem, and how that problem was overcome.

And in this way, the story of Apollo 13 has a lot in common with the stories told in all the world’s great religious traditions. All the world’s religions can be understood as attempts to address our most basic existential human problems and to provide solutions to these problems.

Or at least this is the way the renowned religious scholar Stephen Prothero understands the central task of every great religion. As some of you know, a group at church has been discussing Prothero’s book God Is Not One this year.

Last week we read the chapter on Buddhism. We learned that the central human problem Buddhism seeks to address is suffering. Suffering is the greatest challenge we face: the inevitable reality of illness, old age, and death. Everything we have, and everyone we love, will one day be taken away from us. This is the First Noble Truth.

The Second Noble Truth is that suffering has a cause. We suffer because we fail to see the world as it really is. We are blinded by ignorance. The third truth is that just as our suffering has a cause, it also has a solution. “If we wake up to the way the world really is, in all its flux and flow, and stop clinging to things that are by their nature running through our fingers, then we can achieve nirvana,” Prothero says. We can know perfect bliss.

The fourth truth is how we go about putting all of these insights into action, namely by following the Eightfold Path of right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

Buddhism is a wonderfully pragmatic religion. It approaches the challenges of human living with the same matter-of-fact, can-do attitude with which the astronauts and engineers of Apollo 13 analyzed their technical problems, identified causes, proposed solutions, and then put these ideas into action.

Variations of this problem-solving approach can be found in all the great religions. In our discussion group we learned that Muslims believe the central problem of humanity is the illusion of self-sufficiency and acting as if we can get by without God. The solution is cultivating an attitude of submission – which is the meaning of the word “Islam.” Christians see our central problem as sinfulness. The solution is salvation, through Jesus Christ.

* * *

There is a lot to be said for approaching life with a problem-solving attitude. But there are times when the problem-solving approach – how can I put this – is a problem. Sometimes focusing on problems, even when our goal is to alleviate them, only serves to perpetuate them.

This is the moral of the story of the man sitting under The Great Wish Fulfilling Tree. He had a hunch there might be a problem with the tree under which he was sitting. He thought maybe it was inhabited by a demon. And before he knew it, his suspicion became a reality. And that was the end of the man. Not exactly a happy end to this story. But it does have a moral.

The moral of the story is similar to what Ralph Waldo Emerson was talking about, when he said, “That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

Sometimes, if we want to change of our lives for the better, focusing on what we consider “problems” only serves to deepen the problem.

Psychologists have picked up on this strange phenomenon. They have studied it, and gained new insight into how our brain works.

There is a well-known example of what they learned, which I think makes the point nicely. It is a self-administered exercise, which I would like to attempt with you, right now. Are you ready?

OK, here we go. These are your instructions: “Don’t think of an elephant.” (Pause.) Don’t think of an elephant. How are you doing? How many of you are succeeding at not thinking of the elephant?

When confronted with this kind of exercise, our brains can’t help but think of an elephant. That’s simply the way we are wired. Even though thinking of an elephant is a problem we want to avoid, by focusing on this problem we are perpetuating it.

Likewise, if you want to quit smoking, it is actually often counterproductive to do so by focusing on the problem and trying to undo it: “Don’t smoke that cigarette. Don’t smoke that cigarette. Don’t smoke that cigarette that is left in the crumpled packet I know is in the back of the kitchen drawer, leftover for that dinner party a few weeks ago. Don’t smoke that single cigarette, which would probably taste soooo good.”

* * *

Thinking of our lives as a series of problems that we need to solve can actually be counter-productive. Focusing on what we think of as our problems, trying to change them through good intentions, penetrating analysis, self-persuasion, or brute willpower, can be self-defeating. This is true in the life of an individual. And this is particularly true in the life of an organization, or a congregation, like this church.

As you heard earlier this morning, in the weeks ahead, we as a church will be having conversations about the future we envision. We will be taking a new tack as we approach these conversations, guided by a few distinct assumptions.

The first assumption is that “what we focus on becomes our reality.”

Usually when groups of people want to take pro-active steps in shaping their future, they think about their current situation, and how they fall short of their dreams. They focus on their shortcomings, and the shortcomings become their reality. We want to take a different approach.

So, following on the first, we have a second assumption, and it is this: “in every society, organization or group, something works.” The second assumption is: we are doing something well. In fact we are doing a lot of things well. And if we want to do things better in the future, the most effective way to go about it is not to sit down and talk about the things few things we aren’t doing well. Instead, we should think and talk about what we do very well, and do more of it.

Rather than focusing on the 5% that could use improvement, we should focus on the 95% we are good at, and do more of that.

So if you want to quit smoking, don’t spend your time obsessing about the 5% of the day that you have a lit cigarette in your hand. Instead, focus on the 95% of the day you are doing something else. Think about how to increase that. Think about how you got from 90% to 95% and do more of that. Think about when you chewed some gum, when you made some tea, when you went for a walk, instead.

If you want to improve your life, think about moments you have known, when you were at your best. Think about moments when you felt deep joy. Think about moments when the work you did felt relevant and rewarding. Think about moments when you faced a daunting challenge, and you overcame it. Think about moments in which you felt a profound connection to other people – whether co-workers or lovers or strangers. Think of moments when you were guided by a deep sense of purpose, moments that now, in hindsight, you are proud of.

Don’t think about these things in the abstract. Think about specifics. Think about a particular time, and particular people with you. Recount the story of what happened.

Each of our lives is full of stories. True stories. Funny stories. Sad stories. Important stories. These stories shape us. They make us who we are. These stories are worth remembering. They are worth sharing. Especially the stories about when we were at our best.

These are the stories we want to focus on, as we think about our shared future in our church home. There is real power in telling our stories. And there is real power in listening to the stories of others.

This morning we sang: “gather the spirit harvest the power.” Sharing our stories, is how we “gather the spirit of heart and mind.”

* * *

“Houston, we’ve had a problem.” That line marks the beginning of one great, true story. What makes the story great isn’t that there was an accident in outer space, a serious problem for those involved. What makes the story great, is that it tells of people who truly were at their best. People who, in difficult times, pulled together and stuck together, who contributed their best thinking, who mustered amazing courage, who took significant risks and invested incredible energy into a task that they deeply cared about. It is a great story, because though their situation seemed hopeless, in the end the astronauts realized that everything they needed to survive was right there with them, in their tiny capsule.

We love to hear stories like this, because they remind us of moments when we ourselves were at our best, when in the face of challenge or misfortune, we pulled together, when we found reservoirs of courage and skill, we didn’t know we had. And through some combination of resilience, the support of others, and perhaps plain luck, we survived.

* * *

Too often we live our lives as if a far-away heaven were the solution to all our problems. A beautiful, blissful place, but maddeningly unattainable. Too often we act as if finding God were a problem we need to solve… and if we get the right answer, we will get a gulden, a golden reward. But as the rabbi knew, the question itself is misleading. Because, of course, God is everywhere. God is right here.

Everything we need to build heaven, is right here.

But we can’t do it alone. Alone our vision is too narrow.

Together our vision widens and our strength is renewed.

May we join in the task of a building a religious community

that inspires us to act for justice.

May we draw on our abundant insights and experience,

of life at its best.

May we dare to share these stories,

and may we strive to make more of them.

Amen.

Of Race and Rationality

"Like life, racial understanding is not something we find but something we create."

-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reading: by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from an essay entitled “A Testament of Hope,” which was written in 1968 and published after his death

Whenever I am asked my opinion of the current state of the civil rights movement, I am forced to pause; it is not easy to describe a crisis so profound that it has caused the most powerful nation in the world to stagger in confusion and bewilderment. Today’s problems are so acute because the tragic evasions and defaults of several centuries have accumulated to disaster proportions…

Why is the issue of equality still so far from solution in America, a nation that professes itself to be democratic, inventive, hospitable to new ideas, rich, productive and awesomely powerful? The problem is so tenacious because, despite its virtues and attributes, America is deeply racist and its democracy is flawed both economically and socially. All too many Americans believe justice will unfold painlessly or that its absence for black people will be tolerated tranquilly.

Justice for black people will not flow into society merely from court decisions nor from fountains of political oratory. Nor will a few token changes quell all the tempestuous yearnings of millions of black people. White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society…

When millions of people have been cheated for centuries, restitution is a costly process. Inferior education, poor housing, unemployment, inadequate health care - each is a bitter component of the oppression that has been our heritage. Each will require billions of dollars to correct. Justice so long deferred has accumulated interest and its cost for this society will be substantial in financial as well as human terms. This fact has not been fully grasped, because most of the gains of the past decade were obtained at bargain prices. The desegregation of public facilities cost nothing; neither did the election and appointment of a few black public officials….

It is time we stopped our blithe lip service to the guarantees of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. These fine sentiments are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, but that document was always a declaration of intent rather than of reality. There were slaves when it was written; there were slaves when it was adopted; and to this day, black Americans have not life, liberty, nor the privilege of pursuing happiness, and millions of white Americans are in economic bondage that is scarcely less oppressive…

Reading: from a piece by journalist Ira J. Hadnot in When Race Becomes Real - Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories (Edited by Bernestine Singley, p. 207)

I am tired of race. Bone-weary of thoughts about race. Fatigued by our society’s silence about race. Too broken down in spirit to shoulder the mantle of race. …

More than four decades after the sixties, we are still wearing race on our sleeves.

There is a pretense of understanding and of tolerance. Yet we have a black man chained and dragged to death on the Texas road where he once played as a child.

The spines of my white colleagues stiffen with the slightest reference to race. Black Americans are either “too sensitive” or “too angry” to sustain an intelligent debate. It seems, …race is still about us and them. It will always be about black and white.

Reading: by Tim Wise from Dear White America - Letter to a New Minority (p. 36). Tim Wise is a white author addressing white readers.

We have long been in denial about the reality of racism, even back in the day when, in retrospect, it was blatant. Even in the early 1960s, before the passage of civil rights legislation, most of us, according to Gallup polls, failed to see that the nation had a race problem. Even as African Americans were being hosed down and blown up in Birmingham, beaten in Selma, murdered in Mississippi and segregated and isolated up North, two-thirds of us said blacks had equal opportunity in employment, education and housing. In one 1962 survey, roughly 90 percent of [whites] said that we believed black children had just as good a chance to get a quality education as we or our children did. That we may see such beliefs as borderline delusional now does not change the fact that we believed them to be quite rational at the time.

Of Race and Rationality

A Sermon Delivered on January 15, 2012

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

It is hard to imagine what it was like to live in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1950s and 60s. Martin Luther King, Jr. was installed as minister at Dexter Avenue Church when he was only twenty-five years old. It was 1954, and earlier that year the Supreme Court had just ruled that racial segregation in public schools is illegal.

Just a year later, Rosa Park’s thoughtful act of civil disobedience provided the impetus for the Montgomery bus boycott, and King was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association.

The story of King’s life in the years that follow can be told as a series of hard won victories and unprecedented social reform. The bus boycott, after all, was successful. The increased integration of public schools, of interstate buses, and of lunch counters were all steps toward fulfillment of civil rights demands. King played an important role in a movement that led to the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights act of 1968.

And yet in 1968, in King’s mind, the goals of the civil rights movement were still far out of reach. The crisis is still present, he says. The problems are still acute. The issue of equality is still far from solution. In 1968, Kings says, America is still deeply racist and its democracy deeply flawed, both economically and socially.

* * *

I doubt a majority of Americans - especially white Americans - shared King’s troubling view. After all, even before the civil rights legislation was passed in the 1960s, most white Americans didn’t think racism was a problem. As Tim Wise points out, at the time, the denial of racism seemed like a perfectly rational position to take.

Likewise, it may seem like a rational position today, to believe that great strides have been made since the days of the civil rights movement, and that racism is no longer a serious social problem. Segregation now seems like ancient history. And today we even have an African American president.

But Tim Wise offers some evidence that serious problems persist. For instance, as many of us know, a disparity of wealth has been growing within the country over the last decade. In recent years this has been apparent to millions of Americans, especially those who lost their homes or their jobs in the recent financial crisis.

An additional disparity of wealth has long existed between white and black Americans. Despite the advances of the civil rights movement, a few years ago the average white family still possessed about twelve times the net worth of the average black family. But now, in the wake of the financial crisis, the median worth of white families is twenty times that of black families. (p. 26)

Also discrimination in the work place is far from over. 1.2 million instances of job discrimination against people of color occur every year. A study from 2009 shows that even when a black person has a college degree, he or she is almost twice as likely as a white person with a degree to be unemployed. Even a white man with a criminal record is more likely to be called back for a job interview than a black man without one, even when their qualifications and credentials are identical. (p. 29)

When it comes to our criminal justice system, a lot has changed since the 1960s, but not the changes we might expect. In 1964, about two-thirds of people incarcerated in America were white, and one third were people of color. By the mid 1990s this had reversed. Now two-thirds of those locked up are black or brown, and one third is white - even though the relative rate of criminal offending hardly changed. (p. 34)

Bias in our justice system takes shape in remarkable ways. For instance, though whites account for about 70 percent of drug users, nine in ten people locked up for drug possession are people of color. And in the case of a first-time drug offense, with all other factors being equal, black youth are almost fifty times more likely to be incarcerated than white youth. (p. 36)

Facts and figures such as these do raise the question, how rational people today can tolerate such inequality.

* * *

Racism was a problem, and racism is a problem. But it is a problem that has a solution. Dr. King firmly believed this. (The following ideas are drawn from King’s address “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” delivered on Nov. 16, 1961.)

Dr. King saw two main ways in which, throughout history, oppressed people dealt with their oppression. One is the path of acquiescence, the path of surrender. On this path people learn to adjust themselves to their predicament. They learn to live with discrimination, or segregation, or colonialism. They accept it as the inescapable status quo. The way of the world.

The second path is that of uprising, the path of bitter hatred and physical violence. It is the path by which the oppressed take up arms against their oppressor. And through physical force, at certain points in history, the oppressed have indeed overcome their oppressors through violence or warfare. But as King saw it, this path contains a fatal weakness. It ends up creating more social problems than it solves. And one kind of violence breads another.

But there is a third way to overcome oppression. And this is the path King studied and practiced and taught. It is the path of nonviolent resistance. It is a path that is grounded neither resignation nor hatred, but is grounded in a love ethic.

The love ethic is neither sentimental nor romantic. It is a powerful transformative love: creative, redemptive, and understanding. It is goodwill to all. Theologians call it “the love of God operating in the human heart.”

Another aspect of the nonviolent movement is the firm conviction that within human nature there is an amazing potential for goodness. There is something within each of us that can respond to goodness. Dr. King said, “I know somebody’s liable to say that this is an unrealistic movement if it goes on believing that all people are good. Well, I didn’t say that.”

What King said was that there is a “strange dichotomy,” a “disturbing dualism” within human nature. He agreed with Plato, who compared the human personality to a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each trying to go in a different direction. That’s the way it is in our individual lives, and that’s the way it is in the collective life of humanity. There is a “strange badness” within us. But in spite of this there is also something within us that can respond to goodness.

King said, “to put it in theological terms, the image of God is never totally gone. And so the individuals who believe in this movement… somehow believe that even the worst segregationist can become an integrationist.”

King said, “now sometimes it is hard to believe that this is what [the nonviolent] movement says, and it believes it firmly, that there is something within human nature that can be changed, and this stands at the [very] top of the whole philosophy of the […] movement and the philosophy of nonviolence.”

* * *

So there are three ways we can respond to oppression. There is resignation. There is hatred and physical force. And there is nonviolent resistance.

Nonviolent resistance is guided by a love ethic, which recognizes within every person an indestructible potential for goodness. And while every person is at times torn between doing good or doing bad - the potential to respond to goodness, and to pursue goodness, is always present.

King saw this love ethic as the essence of what Jesus taught, when he told his followers to love their enemies, and to turn the other cheek. And it is the same love ethic he saw put into practice most effectively by Mahatma Gandhi.

When put into practice, the love ethic takes the shape of a single, simple moral imperative. It says that we have a moral obligation to refuse to cooperate with evil, just as we have an obligation to cooperate with good. Sometimes this may mean disobeying the law. Sometimes this may mean challenging social conventions that some consider normal and rational, and yet which are morally wrong.

These are not always easy distinctions to make. Dr. King was well aware of that. He said, this point of the nonviolent philosophy “brings in the whole question of how you can be logically consistent when you advocate obeying some laws and disobeying other laws.” There are two types of laws: just laws and unjust laws. We have a moral obligation to obey one and resist the other.

Dr. King put it this way, he said, “a just law is a law that squares with moral law. …Any law that uplifts human personality is a just law. Whereas that law which is out of harmony with the moral is a law which does not square with the moral law of the universe. It does not square with the law of God.” This law is unjust.

So, for instance, King says, an unjust law is “a code that the majority inflicts on the minority and is not binding on itself. So that this becomes difference made legal.” I have to think of the sentencing for white collar crime, as opposed to blue collar crime. I have to think of the banker who steals millions and walks free, while the petty thief is put in jail.

But King continues: “an unjust law is a code with the majority inflicts upon the minority, which that minority had no part in enacting or creating, because that minority had no right to vote in many instances, so that the legislative bodies that made these laws were not democratically elected.”

A just law is just the opposite. It is saneness made legal. It is a law that applies equally to all, both the majority and the minority. It is a law both majority and minority played a part in creating.

* * *

King’s understanding of racism and injustice, and the path he proposed for overcoming both, is perfectly rational. It is rooted in ancient religious teaching. It is firmly grounded in the existential realities of human nature. It addresses the pragmatic realities political action and economic justice.

Kings brilliance, however, lies not in his superior powers of rational analysis. King’s brilliance lies in the fact that for him rationality is inseparable from morality. King knew the world itself hinges on moral foundations. And while the moral arc of universe is long, it bends toward justice.

Dr. King had a dream. It is hard to imagine what it will take to make that dream a reality. But this much we know: the dream will not flow into society merely from court decisions or from the fountains of political oratory. It will require radical changes in the very structure of our society. The cost will be substantial, both in financial and human terms. But there is no doubt that we can change.

May we honor the memory of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,

By accepting the moral obligation he has placed squarely on our shoulders.

May we open our eyes to the troubling realities of race

May we dare to do the work, we know is required of us,

To create a world in which the love and justice we have known,

Is equally available to all people.

Amen.

The Promise of New Beginnings

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

-- Lao-tze

Meditation: by Mary Oliver, a poem entitled “The Journey”

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice -

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the one thing you could do -

determined to save

the only life that you could save.

Reading: from an editorial entitled “Out the Door and Into 2012,” which appeared in the New York Times of December 31, 2011

Perhaps you have a New Year’s Day of your own — a day when it suddenly feels as though you’ve truly left the old year behind. It may be the day you no longer have to think twice when putting the date on a check, if you still write checks, that is. Perhaps your new year started the moment the days began lengthening just before Christmas. Or perhaps you hold off for the vernal equinox (March 20 in 2012), when New Year used to be celebrated and when, in many places, you can feel the newness of the year about to burst out of the ground.

But the calendar insists that this is the start of the public new year, and so we adjust our feelings to suit, [and find…] an undeniable excitement to this day.

On what other day in the calendar do you feel as though you’ve been handed a large lump of time, to be shaped as you see fit? When else do you feel time’s door closing so solidly behind you as you step out into the new world? We are like children on a bright winter’s day, all sent out to play with no demands or excuses to stay behind.

You may be a maker of resolutions — even a keeper of them — or you may have resolved to make none at all this year. It makes no difference. A resolution, after all, is just a plan to take change by the throat, when we all know that that is what change does to us, whether we like it or not. There is simply no telling what this new year will bring, and that is the very thing that makes it so new.

Reading: a Sufi tale (from The Tree of Knowledge, by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, p. 249)

A story is told of an island somewhere and its inhabitants. The people longed to move to another land where they could have a healthier and better life. The problem was that the practical arts of swimming and sailing had never been developed - or may have been lost long before. For that reason, there were some people who simply refused to think of alternatives to life on the island, whereas others intended to seek a solution to their problems locally, without any thought of crossing the waters. From time to time, some islanders reinvented the arts of swimming and sailing. Also from time to time a student would come up to them, and the following exchange would take place:

“I want to swim to another land.”

“For that you have to learn how to swim. Are you ready to learn?”

“Yes, but I want to take with me my ton of cabbages.”

“What cabbages?”

“The food I’ll need on the other side or wherever it is.”

“But what if there is food on the other side?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I’m not sure. I have to bring my cabbages with me.”

“But you won’t be able to swim with a ton of cabbages. It’s too much weight.”

“Then I can’t learn how to swim. You call my cabbages weight. I call them my basic food.”

“Suppose this were an allegory and, instead of talking about cabbages we talked about fixed ideas, presuppositions, or certainties?”

“Humm… I’m going to bring my cabbages to someone who understands my needs.”

Reading: a poem by Greg Kuzma

I begin my life

over. It’s easy.

You take a deep breath,

close your eyes,

open them, and

there it is,

all the familiar things.

Nobody has to get up.

It’s drawing the chairs

closer to the fire,

opening the window

louder on the sound

of people walking by

outside, taking

another sip of coffee.

It’s habit, too easily

broken by dreams

and regrets. My

mind’s a blank, my

heart stirs, my eyes

take on their gentle

obligation. My hand

is steady as a baby’s sleep.

The Promise of New Beginnings

A Sermon Delivered on January 8, 2012

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

January is a month for beginnings, starting life afresh, doing a better job living up to the expectations we have of ourselves, and fulfilling the goals we set ourselves.

Just days ago millions of Americans made resolutions to lose weight, get fit, quit smoking, fix their finances, or organize their closets. According to a New York Times article, we spent $62 billion last year on health club memberships, weight-loss programs, exercise tapes, diet products and the like. And we are likely to spend a good portion of that amount in January of 2012. (New York Times, “Your Recycled Resolutions Are a Boon for Business,” by Natasha Singer, Dec. 31, 2011)

In January new membership numbers at health clubs double. And the sale of nicotine patches and other anti-smoking products rises by about 40 percent in the first week in January alone.

And yet experience shows that by the time a few weeks have passed, many of us have fallen away from the path of self-improvement. Despite our best intentions, old habits die hard.

Our new exercise equipment gathers dust, our finances remain problematic, and the closets we briefly managed to clean up are once again accumulating piles of clutter.

Some would say our failure to fulfill our ambitious New Year’s resolutions is evidence of a lack of willpower. A weakness of will is our problem, and stepping up our ability to focus more firmly on a single clearly defined goal is the solution.

We have a limited amount of willpower, social psychologists tell us, because willpower is a tangible form of mental energy, fueled by glucose in our bloodstream. And this glucose is used up as we assert self-control.

The best way to cope with these natural physiological limitations, is by adapting a few helpful strategies, for instance to set a single clear goal, to make an explicit and public commitment to your goal before setting out to achieve it, to keep track of your progress, and to grant yourself some reward for your incremental improvements.

“Contrary to widespread public opinion, a considerable proportion of New Year resolvers do succeed,” Dr. John Norcross, a psychologist at the University of Scranton, said. Even though the majority of resolutions are abandoned six months down the line, “you are 10 times more likely to change by making a New Year’s resolution compared to non-resolvers with the identical goals and comparable motivation to change.” (New York Times, “Be It Resolved” by John Tierney, Jan. 5, 2012)

* * *

New Year’s Day is an auspicious time for us to make changes to our life course. New Year’s celebrations say: out with the old, in with the new. The collective attention we give the end of one year, and the beginning of the next, can provide us with the critical amount of excitement or motivation we need to part with behavioral patterns we are not proud of. We can turn away from habits that are destructive or self-destructive, and take steps guided by our better selves. But it isn’t easy.

It isn’t easy to let go of the past. And with every year it becomes more difficult.

That’s the way it seems to me, anyway. With every year I grow older, my habits of behavior and my habits of mind seem more deeply entrenched. With every year that passes, I accumulate more experiences, gather more information, and even acquire new skills - but all of them are arranged in long-familiar ways. My experiences re-enforce the established story of my life, taking me a few steps further along a well-known path. New insights and information simply serve to further substantiate long-held opinions and attitudes about the world and my place in it.

With every year we grow older, our life experience grows weightier. And regardless whether our days were filled carefree happiness, or with painful life lessons learned the hard way - our natural inclination is to hold on to this accumulated wisdom and knowledge.

This is the common human experience conveyed in the Sufi story about the island inhabitants who remain forever stuck on their old little island. They are unable to learn - or relearn - how to swim to new shores, because they are unwilling to part with the ton of cabbages, which they have diligently acquired, and without which survival seems impossible.

They are unable to leave the past behind and explore new territories, because they are weighed down by their own fixed ideas, presuppositions and certainties.

One way to think about it, is that the islanders lack the willpower to put aside their pile of cabbages, and that, if only they had enough willpower and only if they had a good plan, then they would be able to leave past certainties behind, and step out into a new world.

This kind of approach, is an attempt to take change by the throat. But as the author of our first reading sees it, this approach has its limitations. We can’t generally take change by the throat, because that’s what change does to us, whether we like it our not.

Even if we are expert planners, even if we are experts at focusing our energies on a particular goal, we will often remain stuck in old habits and old assumptions.

In order to move beyond deeply engrained habit, it is less helpful to imagine ourselves as experts. It is more helpful to imagine ourselves as beginners, beginners of a new venture, beginners on a journey toward a destination as yet unknown.

* * *

“Beginner’s Mind” is the term Zen Buddhists use to describe an attitude that can free us from preconceived notions, and allows us to gain new and fresh insight.

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind is the title of a book first published in 1970, a collection of lectures by the Zen Buddhist teacher Shunryo Suzuki. Born in Japan, Suzuki came to the United States in 1959, when he was 55 years old to support what at the time was the only Soto Zen temple in San Francisco. He died in 1971, a year after the book was published.

Suzuki’s teachings had a profound effect in popularizing Zen Buddhism in this country. He was a small, quiet, and very ordinary man. Unpretentious and unassuming, one student said, “though he made no waves and left no traces as a personality in the worldly sense, the impress of his footsteps in the invisible world of history lead straight on.”

Beginners Mind is a central idea in Suzuki’s approach to Zen. It is an idea that is intriguing in its simplicity and its subtlety.

The Beginner’s Mind is a mind that is open, limitless. It is the mind, when we try something completely new, for the first time. It is a mind that has emptied itself of all distractions and is attentive to whatever the present moment may hold.

“Our “original mind” includes everything within itself,” Suzuki says. “It is always rich and sufficient within itself… In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”

Suzuki’s teachings are distinctly Buddhist. And yet his ideas share much in common with those of Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel. As Heschel sees it, the world is sublime, suffused with the sacred. And yet we are often blind and deaf to the world’s wonders, because our perspective is so narrow, our perceptions so superficial. We are constrained by our own pre-conceived notions.

“We rarely discover, we remember before we think;” Heschel writes, “we see the present in the light of what we already know. We constantly compare instead of penetrate, and are never entirely unprejudiced. Memory is often a hindrance to creative experience. (Man Is Not Alone, p.6)

* * *

Our past experience can be an obstacle to any new experience. This simple truth has long been a subject of religious reflection. More recently it is also being better understood in scientific circles.

The best way to understand the subtleties of the beginner’s mind, is to look to our own beginnings. We are most profoundly beginners in the first months of our lives, as babies.

Scientists say, a baby’s brain is abuzz with activity, and capable of learning amazing amounts of information very quickly. Jonah Lehrer writes, “unlike the adult mind, which restricts itself to a narrow slice of reality, babies can take in a much wider spectrum of sensation - they are, in an important sense, more aware of the world than we are.” This is not the way we have always understood a baby’s experience.

Scientists and doctors have traditionally assumed that babies are much less conscious than adults - this is why, until the 1970s, many infants underwent surgery without anesthesia. This view is being overturned.

According to more recent research, many of the mental traits that used to seem like developmental shortcomings, such as infants’ inability to focus their attention, are actually crucial assets in the learning process. We often think adults are better at paying attention than children. But, as Alison Gopnik writes, the truth is actually the opposite. “Adults are better at not paying attention. [We’re] better at screening out everything else and restricting [our] consciousness to a single focus.”

For a baby, every day is like going to Paris for the first time. Just go for a walk down the street with a two-year-old, and you’ll start to see things you’ve never noticed before.

Jonah Lehrer says, in some situations it might actually be better for adults to regress into a newborn state of mind. While maturity has its perks, it can inhibit creativity and lead us to fixate on the wrong facts. Sometimes in order to create something completely new, thinking like a baby is our best option. (Jonah Lehrer, Boston Globe Apr. 26, 2009, “Inside the Baby Mind.”)

* * *

Our past can sometimes feel like a ton of cabbages, pinning us down, making it impossible for us to explore new ground. Because we can’t bear to part with those hard won cabbages.

Or our past can feel like a big old house in which we are trapped, by our own assumptions and expectations. Our accumulated old experiences can feel like voices that are perpetually shouting bad advice.

We may long to try something new, some way to be a better person - a more loving partner, a more caring parent, a better friend. We may long to live a better life, to find new reservoirs of courage and compassion, a new spirit of generosity and joy. And yet, when we dare to step outside familiar rooms and hallways, the whole house seems to tremble, and tug at our ankles.

If we dare to step through the doorway, and out into a new road, little by little, we will leave the old voices behind. And as the stars begin to burn through sheets of clouds, and as we stride deeper and deeper into the world, we may hear a new voice, which we slowly recognize as our own.

* * *

We can begin our lives over again. We don’t need superhuman willpower. We don’t need a master plan.

We can begin our lives over. It’s easy.

You take a deep breath,

close your eyes,

open them, and

there it is,

all the familiar things.

Nobody has to get up.

Just let your mind be blank. Let your heart stir. Your hand will be as steady as a baby’s sleep.

* * *

May we honor our past,

May we cherish the paths we have traveled,

which have brought us to the place we are today.

May our past not confine us,

but inspire us to step out into a new world.

Amen.