-- Sir Thomas Browne
Meditation: by Mary Oliver a poem entitled “Halleluiah”
Everyone should be born into this world happy
and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
Halleluiah, anyway I’m not where I started!
And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.
Halleluiah, I’m sixty now, and even a little more,
and some days I feel I have wings.
Reading: by Eugene Peterson from Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best (p.43-45)
There is a rocky cliff on the shoreline of the Montana lake where I live part of each summer. There are breaks in the rockface in which tree swallows make their nest. For several weeks one summer, I watched the swallows in swift flight collect insects barely above the surface of the water then dive into the cavities in the cliff, feeding first their mates and then their newly hatched chicks. Near one of the cracks in the cliff face, a dead branch stretched about four feet over the water. One day I was delighted to see three new swallows sitting side by side on this branch. The parents made wide, sweeping, insect-gathering circuits over the water and then returned to the enormous cavities that those little birds became as they opened their beaks for a feeding.
This went on for a couple of hours until the parents decided they had had enough of it. One adult swallow got alongside the chicks and started shoving them out toward the end of the branch – pushing, pushing, pushing. The end one fell off. Somewhere between the branch and the water four feet below, the wings started working, and the fledgling was off on his own. Then the second one. [But the] third was not to be bullied. At the last possible moment his grip on the branch loosened just enough so that he swung downward, then tightened again, bulldog tenacious. The parent was without sentiment. He pecked at the desperately clinging talons until it was more painful for the poor chick to hang on than risk the insecurities of flying. The grip was released and the inexperienced wings began pumping. The mature swallow knew what the chick did not – that it would fly – that there was no danger in making it do what it was perfectly designed to do.
Birds have feet and can walk. Birds have talons and can grasp a branch securely. They can walk; they can cling. But flying is their characteristic action, and not until they fly are they living at their best, gracefully and beautifully.
Giving is what we do best. It is the air into which we are born. It is the action that was designed into us before our birth. Giving is the way the world is. … We are given away to our families, to our neighbors, to our friends… Our life is for others. This is the way creation works. Some of us try desperately to hold on to ourselves, to live for ourselves. We look so bedraggled and pathetic doing it, hanging on to the dead branch of a bank account for dear life, afraid to risk ourselves on the untried wings of giving. We don’t think we can live generously because we have never tried. But the sooner we start the better, for we are going to have to give up our lives finally, and the longer we wait the less time we have for the soaring and swooping life of grace.
Reading: by Ellen Waterson a poem entitled “Designed to Fly”
After ten hours of trying
the instructor undid
my fingers, peeled
them one by one
off the joystick.
"You don't need
to hold the plane
in the air," he advised.
"It's designed to fly.
A hint of aileron,
a touch of rudder,
is all that is required."
I looked at him
like I'd seen God.
Those props and struts
he mentioned, they too,
I realized, all contrived.
I grew dizzy
from the elevation
from looking so far
down at the surmise:
the airspeed of faith
underlies everything.
Lives are designed
to fly.
Divine Contact
A Sermon Delivered on February 17, 2013
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
Air travel is not what it used to be. In this day and age - with airlines struggling to contain costs, overbooking flights, understaffing their ground crews - flying out of O’Hare seems like an exercise in coping with inevitable chaos.
More often than not, it seems, flights are delayed or canceled, luggage is lost, connections are missed, and endless hours are spent twiddling thumbs, waiting at the gate. Or after the brief elation of being allowed to board your plane, you are settled in your assigned seat, but stuck somewhere on the runway. You are left sitting there, strapped in, with little else to do but wonder whether you will ever reach your desired destination.
Those of us who regularly travel by air know that the whole enterprise can be a big headache. It certainly often feels that way to me…
But, I have to tell you, despite the headache and the hassle, I really like to fly. Even when flying is crazed and cumbersome there is still something exciting and amazing and somehow unbelievably miraculous about it.
Even if I am stuck for hours in an airport terminal, I never get tired of looking out the window, watching airplanes take off and land. There is always a part of me that can’t believe that such huge machines could ever get off the ground. A 747 weighs over 400 tons!
And whenever I fly, I try to get a window seat, because there is nothing quite like looking out the window during takeoff, and watching the earth speed by, and then watching as houses, trees and cars grow smaller and smaller, as we rise high up into the sky. Today flying is as common as getting on a city bus, and yet it is a miracle I wouldn’t believe unless I had seen it with my own eyes.
* * *
I wonder what it must have been like on that cold December day in 1903, when the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright became the first people to successfully demonstrate “powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight.”
Neither of them had completed high school. They had worked as printers and publishers and bicycle builders before they turned their attention to the airplane. Then after years of trials and errors, on that December day, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, they made their historic flight, from level ground, into freezing headwind. On that first flight, Orville was airborne for twelve seconds, ten feet off the ground. He traveled 40 yards, at about 7 miles per hour.
That isn’t very far and isn’t very fast. An Olympic runner could cover the distance on foot three times faster. But that didn’t matter. They had figured out how to fly.
* * *
We humans have been dreaming of flight for a long time. Over two thousand years ago, ancient Greeks imagined the story of Icarus, who flew with the help of wings his father built out of feathers and wax. For centuries inventors and engineers experimented with kites and gliders and hot air balloons. But we didn’t figure out the secret of powered and sustained flight until the 1900s.
The success story of the Wright brothers is a kind of modern fairy tale. Gary Bradshaw writes, “It is the story of how two honest, straightforward, hard-working Americans accomplished something fantastic and magical -- creating a craft of stick and fabric that mounted the air like the chariots of the gods, opening the skies to all humankind.” But, in fact, it wasn’t that big of a miracle.
As Bradshaw explains it, the Wright brothers didn’t actually invent the airplane. Others before them had already discovered the rules of aerodynamics, designed wings and gliders, and built gas-powered engines and propellers. The problem was the early aircrafts built by others had a persistent habit of crashing.
What Orville and Wilbur realized was that the biggest challenge of flying is not getting into the air. The challenge is to figure out how to control your plane once you are airborne. The Wright brothers’ true claim to fame was not the invention of the airplane, but the invention of “three-axis-control.” This is what allowed the pilot to steer the aircraft effectively – guiding the roll and pitch and yaw.
* * *
Flying seems like a miracle, impossible, unbelievable, and yet it is perfectly natural. Birds and bats and bumblebees show us how it is done. And our airplanes – made to mimic the movement of eagles’ wings – are designed to fly.
There is no need to clench the joystick with an iron grip. We don’t need to hold the plane in the air with brute force and gritted teeth.
What we need to do is ease up, watch our balance in all three dimensions, and allow ourselves to be carried by the airspeed of faith that underlies everything.
* * *
A few years ago a man from Kansas City named Larry Stewart made headlines in the news. Larry Stewart, we learned, had had a secret identity. For 26 years he had spent his free time roaming the streets in the month of December, discretely giving money to people who needed it. He started with $5 and $10 dollar bills, but then got into the habit of handing out $100s. Over the years, he gave away over a million dollars.
Stewart had made millions in the cable TV business. His habit of secret giving was a small way he decided to share his good fortune. Why did he reveal his identity? Some say it was because he had recently been diagnosed with cancer. Stewart himself said it was because a tabloid paper was about to “out” him, and he wanted to tell his story before they did.
He said it all began around Christmas time of 1979. He had just lost his job. In fact, he had been fired right before Christmas two years in a row. Feeling sorry for himself, he went to get some dinner at a drive-in diner. It was a very cold evening, and as he was sitting in his car waiting for his meal, he noticed the carhop working outside.
He said, “It was cold and this carhop didn't have on a very big jacket, and I thought to myself, ‘I think I got it bad. She's out there in this cold making nickels and dimes.’ [So I gave her $20 and told her to keep the change...] And suddenly I saw her lips begin to tremble and tears begin to flow down her cheeks. She said, ‘Sir, you have no idea what this means to me.’” When Stewart had finished his dinner, he went straight to his bank, withdrew $200, and then drove around looking for people on the street, who could use a lift. And that’s how it all began.
Over the years, known only as “Secret Santa,” Stewart inspired thousands of others to pitch in and practice small acts kindness and generosity. He died of cancer a few months after his identity was revealed.
* * *
Larry Stewart’s generosity was extraordinary. But the impulse to give is something to which millions of Americans can relate.
The truth is, as humans we are neither isolated from, nor indifferent to the fate of our fellows. When we see someone in need, we instinctively want to help. When we see people hurting, we want to ease their pain. When we witness a wrong, we want to help make it right.
Every day the newspapers seem to tell us we live in a cold, cruel world. And so it seems our human impulse toward kindness and compassion is a miracle, impossible, unbelievable. And yet it is perfectly natural.
Scientists have studied this. Research shows that when we watch staged videos of strangers being subjected to pain - for instance, receiving electric shocks - we automatically have strong visceral emotional reactions. Our hands start to sweat, and our blood pressure surges. (Like Goat in our story this morning, when we see someone who looks sad, we instinctively want to help.) (Children’s Story: That’s What Friends Are For by Valeri Gorbachev)
Our profound concern for others is hard-wired in our brain. It’s an evolutionary aspect of being a social animal. That’s why, on a very tangible and neurologically measurably level, acts of altruism feel good. Our brain is designed so that acts of charity are pleasurable. Being nice to others makes us feel nice.
In a study published by the National Academy of Sciences, people were hooked up to an MRI machine, and then each given $128 of real money. They were told they could either keep the money or donate it to charity.
“When they chose to give away the money, the “reward centers” in their brains became active and they experienced the delightful glow of unselfishness. In fact, several subjects showed more reward-related brain activity during acts of altruism than they did when they actually received cash rewards. From the perspective of the brain, it literally was better to give than to receive.” (Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide, p. 183)
* * *
Birds have feet and can walk. They have talons and can grasp a branch. But what birds do best is fly. Likewise, we can live all our lives earning money, and saving it up, but what we do best, is giving it away.
“Giving is what we do best. It is the air into which we are born. It is the action that was designed into us before our birth. Giving is the way the world is,” Eugene Peterson writes. Nevertheless, giving is scary. There is a young and fearful voice within each of us, that wants to hang on to the dead branch we are grasping, afraid to risk our untried wings of giving.
Eugene Peterson writes,
“Some things we have a choice in, some we don’t. In this we don’t. It is the kind of world into which we were born… Giving is the style of the universe. Giving is woven into the fabric of existence. If we try to live by getting instead of giving, we are going against the grain. It is like to trying to go against the law of gravity – the consequences is bruises and broken bones. In fact, we do see a lot of distorted, misshapen, crippled lives among those who defy the reality that all life is given and must continue to be given to be true to its nature.”
* * *
We are in the midst of this year’s stewardship season. It is a time when our church stewardship team encourages us to think about giving. (On the red insert in today’s order of service, you can read more about their plans.)
The theme they selected is “Contact!” because the most important part of what we do at church has everything to do with the contact between us, the connections we make, the give and take of friendship.
“Contact!” is also what a pilot sitting in the cockpit of an old-fashioned airplane shouts to the co-pilot when they are ready to take off. The co-pilot stands in front of the aircraft, with hands on the propeller, ready to give it a hearty yank. When the time is right, they look into one another’s eyes. Both are ready, and the pilot shouts, “Contact!”
* * *
The word “Contact!” should remind us that, even though flying seems like a miracle, impossible, unbelievable - it is perfectly natural. “Contact!” should remind us that our lives are designed to fly – but we can’t do it alone. Alone neither Wilbur nor Orville would have gotten off the ground. They did it together.
“Contact!” should remind us that as human beings, we are hard-wired to care for others. Our generosity is what makes us fully human. It is the secret of health and happiness. “Contact!” should remind us that giving is woven into the very fabric our existence. We are designed to give.
In the days and weeks ahead,
may we dare to give generously.
May we perform the natural miracle of kindness
So we might know true happiness,
and the unmistakable feeling that we have wings.
Amen.
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