-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Meditation: by the Unitarian Universalist minister Mark
Belletini (adapted)
Burning fire! Do not
consume us, as once with that bush of old,
but continue to kindle us, and let the inner voice of our
calling to love and duty
be loud in our hearts!
Where there is fear, let us bring [hope].
Where we see eyes filled with terror, may we reach out to
embrace and welcome.
Spirit fire of our deepest longing, keep us from arrogance,
and superior attitudes…
May we never think ourselves giddy with the flash of fire,
but may we love only its steady heat and constancy.
From the tangles of our daily obsessions and habits,
lift us to loftier thoughts of peace…
Spirit of fire, eternal kinship bring us to a brotherhood
and sisterhood
deeper than blood, or politics or religion, kindle in us an
unswerving love.
Reading: by Roger
Ebert from Life Itself: a Memoir (p.
414-415)
“Kindness” covers all of my political beliefs. No need to
spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we
have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make
ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others
less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We
must try to contribute to joy in the world. That is true no matter what our
problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this
and am happy I lived long enough to find out.
One of these days I will encounter
what Henry James called on his deathbed “the distinguished thing.” I will not
be conscious of the moment of passing. In this life I have already been
declared dead. It wasn’t so bad. After the first ruptured artery, the doctors
thought I was finished. My wife, Chaz, said she sensed that I was still alive
and was communicating to her that I wasn’t finished yet. She said our hearts
were beating in unison, although my heartbeat couldn’t be discovered. She told
the doctors I was alive, they did what doctors do, and here I am, alive.
Do I believe her? Absolutely. I
believe her literally – not symbolically, figuratively or spiritually. I
believe she was actually aware of my call and that she sensed my heartbeat. I
believe she did it in the real, physical world I have described, the one that I
share with my wristwatch. I see no reason why such communication could not take
place. I’m not talking about telepathy, psychic phenomenon or a miracle. The
only miracle is that she was there when it happened, as she was for many long
days and nights. I’m talking about her standing there and knowing something.
Haven’t many of us experienced that? Come on, haven’t you? What goes on happens
at a level not accessible to scientists, theologians, mystics, physicists,
philosophers or psychiatrists. It’s a human kind of a thing.
Someday I will no longer call out,
and there will be no heartbeat. I will be dead.
Reading: from a press
release written by Roger Ebert’s wife, Chaz Ebert, this past Thursday, the day
he died.
We were getting ready to go home today for hospice care,
when he looked at us, smiled, and passed away. No struggle, no pain, just a
quiet, dignified transition.
Reading: by Gregg
Levoy from Callings: Finding and
Following an Authentic Life (p. 323)
We want our lives to catch fire and burn blue, not smolder.
We want to use ourselves up, leave this life the way we entered it – complete –
and die with a yes on our lips and not a no, making that last transition, that
final threshold, with some grace, with eyes wide open and not squeezed shut as
if for a blow. We don’t want to enter kingdom come kicking and screaming and
begging for more time. Following our calls is one way to love our lives, to
flood them with light that can shine back out of them, and to make life easier
to explain to ourselves when it’s over and we’re wondering “What was that all about?” By following our calls,
we just may be able to face death more squarely. Although we may never really be ready for it, we’ll never be
readier.
The fear of
death has always seemed to me to be largely the fear that we’re not living the way we want to. I once knew a
woman whose husband of twenty-five years died after a very long illness, and
shortly afterward she told me something that I didn’t understand at the time
but do now. She said that the more she loved him, the easier it became to
consider losing him. In my early twenties then, I thought this would make it harder to lose him, not easier. Now, I
understand: Loving him more left less for her to regret not having done, not
having said.
How We Are Called
A Sermon Delivered on
April 7, 2013
By
The Rev. Axel H.
Gehrmann
Last week Roger Ebert died. Born right here in Urbana 70
years ago, he lived at 410 East Washington Street, and he grew up to become
perhaps the best-known movie reviewer in the country. Back in 1975, Ebert was
the first movie critic ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His columns were
syndicated in more than 200 newspapers, and since 1999 he hosted “Roger Ebert’s
Overlooked Film Festival” at the Virginia Theater here in Champaign, now known
simply as the annual “Ebertfest.”
In 2002 Ebert was diagnosed with cancer. The surgeries and
treatments he underwent took a toll. In 2007 he lost the ability to speak. But
still he carried on, writing and reviewing movies, blogging and tweeting, and
speaking with the help of a computer. He was still blogging just days before he
died.
Raised Roman Catholic, he says, his mother wanted him to be
a priest. From an early age he heard her say, the priesthood is “the greatest
vocation one could hope for in life.” “There [is] no greater glory for a mother
than to ‘give her son to the church.’” But despite his mother’s best efforts,
that is not the way life worked out for Roger.
Journalism was his life’s calling. He was exceptionally
gifted and hard-working, drawn to writing, practically since he could hold a
pencil. As the New York Times put it:
“He was barely old enough to
write when he started his journalistic career, publishing The Washington Street
News in his basement and delivering copies to a dozen neighborhood houses. He
worked at his grade school newspaper, edited his high school paper and by age
15 was earning 75 cents an hour covering high school sports for The News-Gazette.”
(“A Critic for the Common Man” by Douglas Martin, The New York Times, April 4, 2013)
This week newspapers and blogs have been filled with
tributes to Roger Ebert, celebrating his life and legacy. Reading some of them,
I found myself moved and inspired not only by his amazing accomplishments, but
also by his spirit of kindness and humility.
* * *
Imagine if all of our lives were guided by a sense of
calling, as compelling and unmistakable as Roger Ebert’s chosen vocation.
Imagine if we were driven by a sense of purpose and passion, that allowed us to
invest ourselves so fully in our chosen field.
Don’t we all want our lives to catch fire and burn blue, not
smolder? Don’t we all long to follow our calling, so that we can love our lives
to the fullest? I know I do. But in my experience, finding our calling, and
following our calling is not easy to do.
* * *
I remember when I was first getting started in ministry. It
was 1988, and I was working as a ministerial intern at the UU congregation in
Hayward, California. (Mark Belletini, the author of our meditation this
morning, was the minister there, and my supervisor.)
That year I had my first encounter with the so-called Ministerial
Fellowship Committee. This is the denominational body that decides whether or
not candidates for the ministry are actually cut out for the job.
Back in the 1980s, when I saw the committee, an important
part of the interview was to clearly convey your conviction, that you are
indeed “called to the ministry.”
All my classmates, it seemed, had compelling stories to tell
of what had led them into the ministry. Each of them seemed to have an
experience of awakening or conversion, like the apostle Paul on the road to
Damascus, or like Moses, who one day was caught by surprise, by a burning bush
that addressed him by name, and told him exactly what he needed to do in order
to lead his people out of Egypt.
For some it was a mid-life crisis, for others it was a passion
kindled since childhood. For some it was an inspiring encounter with a
religious person, for others it was a shift from political activism toward a
more spiritual engagement.
At the time, I was 24 years old, the youngest in my class.
And I didn’t share the clear sense of calling that seemed common among my peers.
“Are you called to the ministry?” The question itself rubbed
me the wrong way. What do you mean “called” to the ministry? How can I feel
called, when I don’t believe in an anthropomorphic God, who spends his days
considering the career options of men and women on earth, and then clears his
throat, and calls out to people, telling them what to do?
And what is ministry, anyway? Ministry, I thought, is
something only bona fide ministers do – men and women, who are older, wiser,
more patient, and certainly more inspired than I was. Ministers are selfless
servants, courageous activists, powerful preachers, eloquent authors and –
above all – they are grounded in a unshakable sense of certainty when it comes
to matters of faith. That wasn’t me. I was young, with far more questions than
answers about the meaning of life. My sense of the sacred was marked by
profound ambiguity and ambivalence. Where others seemed to be guided by a sense
of certainty, I was an expert in self-doubt.
I remember, the first time I saw the Fellowship Committee, I
tried to express my complicated thoughts about the call to ministry, with a
sermon that compared the role of minister to that of an actor. A persona,
shaped by religious history and tradition, which a person may put on, but which
invariably involves a degree doubt and ambiguity.
The sermon didn’t go over well.
* * *
Being “called” to anything is a complicated experience.
Gregg Levoy writes,
“Because the notion of call is
historically tied up with religion, we tend to think of it as divinely
inspired, which induces a good measure of terror. Calls are, in our minds, big,
and we feel we have to respond in a big way, which, of course, can be
paralyzing. It is therefore important to remember, first, that a call isn’t
something that comes from on high as an order, a sort of divine subpoena,
irrespective of our own free will and desire. We have a choice…
Second,
few people actually receive big calls, in visions of flaming chariots and
burning bushes. Most of the calls we receive and ignore are the proverbial
still, small voices that the biblical prophets heard, the daily calls to pay
attention to our intuitions, to be authentic, to live by our codes of honor.
Our
lives are measured out in coffee spoons, wrote T.S. Eliot; they are measured
out not in the grand sweeps but in the small gestures. The great breakthroughs
in our lives generally happen only as a result of the accumulation of
innumerable small steps and minor achievements.” (p. 4)
Levoy makes the case that it is a mistake to expect our life
calling to reveal itself in a single grand gesture, like a clap of thunder or a
flash of lightening. Waiting for that kind of calling, we may find ourselves
waiting our whole lives in vain.
Finding our calling, and heeding our calling is much
trickier than that. It is a matter of paying close attention to the everyday events
of our lives, and how they touch us. We need to pay attention to our dreams and
nightmares, our successes and our failures, our hopes and our fears. Any of
them can provide clues about our calling. We need to pay attention to hunches
and guesses, and to those experiences that make us feel most fully alive.
A call is not a one-time event. It is also not a one-way
communication. A call needs a response. And the response is an awakening of
some kind. Levoy writes, “A call is only a monologue. A return call, a
response, creates a dialogue. Our own unfolding requires that we be in constant
dialogue with whatever is calling us.”
“Calls are essentially questions,” he says.
“They aren’t questions you
necessarily need to answer outright; they are questions to which you need to
respond, expose yourself, and kneel before. You don’t want an answer you can
put in a box and set on a shelf. You want a question that will become a chariot
to carry you across the breadth of your life, a question that will offer you a
lifetime of pondering, that will lead you toward what you need to know for your
integrity… These questions will also lead you to others whose lives are
propelled by the same questions…” (p. 6)
* * *
When I was 24 years old, it was a mistake to imagine
ministry as a vocation I could slip on like a garment, like the ceremonial
stoles placed on the shoulders of seminary graduates. Ministry, for me, was not
a calling, fully formed, as unmistakable as a blazing fire. It was more like a question,
persistently nagging at me. A question that is always asking me if I can look
more closely, listen more carefully, live more fully.
The further I pursued the question, over the years, the more
I came to realize that ministry is a much broader field than I had imagined.
And that ministers come in all shapes and sizes. To minister, is not a matter
of mastering a particular set of skills, like preaching or teaching. To
minister is to pursue anything you do in a spirit of attentiveness and care.
To minister, the dictionary says, is to serve. When we
minister, we are mindful of how our actions affect others. Whatever we do, we
do in order to make the world, in some small way, a better place. Ministry is
when we do whatever we can, according to our abilities, to make others a little
happier.
And, yes, that means making ourselves a little happier, too.
Because making ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. It is the first step
in making others unhappy.
As far as I am concerned, finding our own unique ministry,
finding a way to make a difference, finding a way to feel the deep happiness
that comes when acts of kindness are extended – that is what the religious
enterprise is all about.
That’s what this church is all about: to provide a place
where we can discover and develop our unique ministries. Among friends and
fellow seekers, who share a commitment to kindness, and who are ready to roll
up their sleeves and lend a hand. This is a place where we can ponder the
essential questions of our lives, and where we can safely explore how best to
respond.
Our call is a persistent question. Our every answer is a
step we take toward the very life of life. Some imagine our call is a question
posed by God, or the Universe, or the Ground of Being. I like the way Kahlil
Gibran put it: our call is an expression of “life’s longing for itself.”
The call we hear, the call to which we respond, can take
many different shapes. It can play out in our choice of career, or how we
choose to build a home. It can be a matter of the friendships we make, or how
we invest our energies in causes we care about.
Chaz Ebert heard a call in the heartbeat of husband. No one
else heard what she heard. And her response made the difference between death
and more life.
Our life calling is a dialogue that sometimes is carried out
between people.
“How can I begin to tell you about Chaz?” Roger Ebert once
wrote.
“She fills my horizon; she is the
great fact of my life; she is the love of my life; she saved me from the fate
of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed to be heading.
“If
my cancer had come, and it would have, and Chaz had not been there with me, I
can imagine a descent into lonely decrepitude. I was very sick. I might have
vegetated in hopelessness. This woman never lost her love, and when it was
necessary she forced me to want to live. She was always there believing I could
do it, and her love was like a wind pushing me back from the grave.” (The News-Gazette, April 5, 2013)
Sometimes life’s longing for itself, is sensed most clearly
in love, given and received.
For me, Roger Ebert’s life is an inspiration, not because he
won the Pulitzer Prize, not because he was brilliant and prolific. He is an
inspiration because he chose to respond to his life calling with an ever-growing
spirit of kindness, and an ever-deeper capacity to love. His life caught fire
and burned blue, and did not smolder. And when he left it, he died with a yes
on his lips and his eyes wide open. Loving deeply and living fully, he was able
to leave peacefully, with no regrets.
May we each have the wisdom to hear our own life’s calling.
May we be mindful of how we might hear it in sorrow and in
joy,
in certainty and in doubt, in struggle and in success.
And may we have the courage to respond with a deeper love.
Amen.
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