-- W. Somerset Maugham
Musical Meditation: as a meditation this morning, I have a poem by Stephen Schwartz that speaks of the way our lives are touched and transformed by the people we know – neighbors or teachers, friends or lovers. It’s entitled “For Good,” and was put to music for a Broadway production. Here it is sung by Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth.
I've heard it said that people come into our lives
For a reason, bringing something we must learn.
And we are led to those who help us most to grow,
If we let them, and we help them in return.
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true,
But I know I'm who I am today because I knew you.
Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes the sun,
Like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the wood,
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you, I have been changed for good.
It well may be that we will never meet again
In this lifetime, so let me say before we part:
So much of me is made of what I learned from you,
You'll be with me like a handprint on my heart.
And now whatever way our stories end,
I know you have rewritten mine by being my friend.
Like a ship blown from its mooring by a wind off the sea,
Like a seed dropped by a sky-bird in a distant wood,
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you, I have been changed for good.
And just to clear the air,
I ask forgiveness for the things I've done you blame me for.
But then, I guess we know there's blame to share,
And none of it seems to matter anymore.
Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes the sun,
Like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the wood,
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
I do believe I have been changed for the better.
Because I knew you ...
Because I knew you ...
I have been changed for good.
Introduction
Before I begin, a word from your sponsor: This morning’s sermon is being offered to you by the organizers of last year’s service auction. At the service auction last April, the Loui family won a “personalized sermon.” Michael Loui selected today’s theme, “Writing a New Chapter in the Book of Life.” Be sure to attend our next service auction, on April 12th this year. Join the fun and see what exciting items you can win, while at the same time supporting our church home.
Reading: by Dan Wakefield from The Story of Your Life: Writing a Spiritual Autobiography (p. 1)
Each of us could write many different versions of our life story, looking at our experience from a variety of perspectives, all of them valid and “true.” We could write a “romantic autobiography,” recounting the loves of our lives from that first childhood fantasy…, through teenage passion…, adult commitment to another person and the choice of a shared life. For many people this means marriage, sometimes with children and the fullness and challenge of family life; and all too often comes the wrench of divorce, followed by a slow, rocky process of recovery.
We could each write an “economic autobiography” that traced our handling of money from the first savings account opened with the earnings from a paper route or baby-sitting job to the burden of a big mortgage, overextended credit cards, and perhaps a midlife plunge in the stock market. A “physical autobiography” might take us from early dreams of glory on the tennis court or the Little League diamond… to later languor at the office, a postgraduate spare tire at the waistline turning into a medicine ball of flesh at thirtysomething, then getting back in shape through aerobics and running and learning one hundred ways to cook tofu. Other areas of life that could serve as the focus of autobiography include professional…, psychological…, educational…
Reading: by Annie Dillard from The Writing Life (p. 3)
When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year.
You make the path boldly and follow it fearfully. You go where the path leads. At the end of the path, you find a box canyon. You hammer out reports, dispatch bulletins.
The writing has changed, in your hands, and in a twinkling, from an expression of your notions to an epistemological tool. The new place interests you because it is not clear. You attend. In your humility, you lay down the words carefully, watching all the angles...
The line of words is a hammer. You hammer against the walls of your house. You tap the walls lightly, everywhere. After giving many years’ attention to these things, you know what to listen for. Some of the walls are bearing walls; they have to stay, or everything will fall down. Other walls can go with impunity; you can hear the difference. Unfortunately, it is often a bearing wall that has to go. It cannot be helped. There is only one solution, which appalls you, but there it is. Knock it out. Duck.
Reading: by Michael Blumenthal a poem entitled “The New Story of Your Life”
Say you finally invented a new story
of your life. It is not the story of defeat
or of your impotence and powerlessness
before the large forces of wind and accident.
It is not the sad story of your mother’s death
or of your abandoned childhood. It is not,
even, a story that will win you the deep
initial sympathies of the benevolent goddesses
or the care of the generous, but it is a story
that requires of you a large thrust
into the difficult life, a sense of plentitude
entirely your own. Whatever the story is,
it goes as it goes, and there are vicissitudes
in it, gardens that need to be planted,
skills sown, the long hard labors
of prose and enduring love. Deep down
in some long-encumbered self,
it is the story you have been writing
all of your life, where no Calypso holds you
against your own willfulness,
where you can rise
from the bleak island of your old story
and tread your way home.
Writing a New Chapter in the Book of Life
A Sermon Delivered on January 12, 2014
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
This morning’s sermon is inspired by conversations I have had with Michael Loui (a member of our church, and co-director of our children’s choir). As some of you may know, Michael has been teaching at the University of Illinois for over thirty years now. He is 58 years old, and happily married to Cindy. Both of their sons have left home.
As a professor, he could continue to pursue his current professional path, which has been very successful and rewarding, but he also has the option now of early retirement. He could travel with Cindy, or do more ballroom dancing, or play more piano. Or he could explore alternative avenues in his field, some combination of education, ethics, and engineering.
There have been several deaths in the family, which are sources of sadness, and also poignant reminders that the years of our lives are limited. None of us live forever. We don’t know how our health will hold up. And so with every year we grow older, the question how we should live our lives becomes more pressing.
Looking back on the past chapters of his life, Michael knows he has much to be grateful for. He loves his family, he loves his work. However, as he put it very eloquently, he is "cursed with the privilege of choice," and now wonders how to write the next chapter of his life.
The questions with which Michael is grappling are his own. But the truth is, we are all “cursed with the privilege of choice.” We are all authors of our own life stories. Every day is another page in our own ongoing saga. And every day – in our choices of what to do and what to leave undone – we determine how our story continues, and ultimately how our story will end. This is equally true when we decide which college we can attend, when we wonder which career path to follow, or contemplate the best time to retire.
* * *
The beginning of a new year is a good time to ponder our past, and consider plans for our future. In the days following new year’s, according to Jewish tradition, God’s Book of Life is opened, and God looks at his ledger. For the duration of the high holy days, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the faithful are encouraged to reflect on their shortcomings. If we have fallen short of our ideals, if we have failed others, we should try to make amends, so that in the year to come we can do better. We have ten days to mend our ways and hopefully alter God’s judgment in our favor. Then God picks up a heavenly pen, jots down a few notes that describe God’s intentions for us in the year ahead, and then God closes the book.
The Jewish author Mark Kirschbaum writes, the good we do in our lives makes up the events recorded in the Book of Life. These actions are registered in the “book of life” because actions of this sort are like living breathing organisms, full of “vital life force.” In this way, it isn’t actually God who writes, but us. We choose the text of the book of life. We ourselves are the authors. Mark Kirschbaum’s new year’s wish for us is that we “may we all become great writers for this year’s book of life.”
Jewish observances at the beginning of a year are compelling. Looking at past wrongs and making them right makes a lot of sense. But it isn’t easy. For one thing, even in hindsight, it isn’t always clear where we may have gone wrong. Sometimes our best efforts to do good end up accomplishing just the opposite. Sometimes in efforts to help, we end up doing harm.
Any time we reflect on the story of our lives, we may discover new dimensions of the past. With every day we grow older, with each step we take on our journey, we gain a slightly different perspective on the paths we have traveled up to this point.
Each of us could tell many different versions of our life story, looking at our experience from a variety of perspectives, all of them valid and “true,” Dan Wakefield writes. Depending on the day, some stories may feel more true than others.
* * *
This morning’s meditation is from the Broadway musical “Wicked.” For those of you who didn’t know: “Wicked” first premiered ten years ago, won several Tony awards, broke box office records around the world, and is now, with over 4,000 performances, among the longest-running shows in Broadway history.
“Wicked” is a retake on the well-known tale of the Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West, the villain of the original story. It focuses on her life, and especially her relationship with her adversary, Glinda, the Good Witch of the North.
The story begins when they meet in school. A girl named Elphaba has green skin, because of some green elixir her father handled before she was born. And though she is smart, spirited, good-hearted, and a very gifted magician, her colored skin makes her an outcast among the students. Her roommate is a beautiful, popular, and rather shallow blond girl named Galinda. Initially their differences drive them apart.
The plot is complex. There are bad people in the school and the highest offices of Oz who try to use Elphaba and her magical talents for their own devious purposes. The biggest bad guy of all is the Wizard, a fraud who has cruel plans for the people and animals of Oz. When Elphaba realizes the true nature of his intentions, she refuses to be a part of them. As a result she is ostracized, driven away from Oz, and given the name “Wicked Witch of the West.”
The Wizard and his minions are the ones who create the magical tornado that brings Dorothy’s house crashing down on Elphaba’s sister. And the wizard is the one who tries to turn Dorothy into an unwitting witch slayer.
There are plenty of twists in the story: love and heartbreak, deception and betrayal, heroism and cowardice, sacrifice and redemption. In this version of the story the Good Witch of the North and the Wicked Witch of the West are actually life-long friends. They are allies, each in their own way trying to do good.
Their friendship is at the heart of the story. In the witch’s version their life stories are intertwined. Each of them was shaped and changed by the other. As Elphaba sings, “and now whatever way our stories end, I know you have rewritten mine by being my friend.” Their friendship has changed both of them for good.
* * *
There are many different ways to write the story of our lives. The heroes and villains may switch places depending on our perspective, depending on new insights we gain as we grow older, and hopefully wiser. Our most painful moments, in the long run, may turn out to be sources of happiness. Circumstances that seem to curse us may turn out to be blessings.
Dan Wakefield spent several years teaching men and women to write the stories of their lives in writing workshops. He encouraged them to reflect on the people and events of their lives, and then to write short pieces about them for their own autobiography. Not a romantic or economic autobiography. Not a professional, psychological or educational one, but a spiritual autobiography.
Wakefield was deeply impressed with the quality of writing his students produced, and with insights the simple act of writing could inspire. More often than not, the insights didn’t spring from an examination of the big life-changing events – family deaths and births, marriages and divorces, serious accidents or dramatic accomplishments. More often than not, inspiration was found pondering some of the minor characters of their familiar life stories, and pausing to consider their impact.
For example, Wakefield tells of a man who wrote and then read to the class a piece about a high school friend he admired and looked up to, but also feared. Wakefield writes,
“The friend was a natural athlete, a “tough guy” in ways that both awed and intimidated the man who was recalling his influence. As he recounted the elements that made the “tough guy” admired as a teenager, he realized those very kinds of behavior and personality traits were ones that in adult life could lead such a person into considerable difficulty.
As he read the paper, I could sense that in the process of writing the recollection, its author had begun to see his old friend in a new way, to come to a more mature understanding of him, taking an adult view of a teenager’s behavior. In doing so, he lost some of his awe and fear. It seemed obvious that the shedding of that adolescent burden was a relief, a shift in experience that I could feel in an almost palpable way as the man read his piece. The very tone of his voice changed, taking on a sense of quiet confidence… [He realized that] his own inability to be a “tough guy” as a teenager was perhaps not so bad after all, and did not mean (as he had felt in the past) a lack of courage or strength or a failure in his manhood, but might even be taken as a sign of his own early maturity or sensitivity.” (p. 21)
* * *
When we want to write new chapters in the book of our lives, we may be tempted to focus on the future. We turn our attention to the blank pages in front of us, wondering how we will fill them. Which choices should we make? Which course of action is the one we should take? We wonder about possibilities. We make tentative plans. We weigh potential outcomes.
We may think the past behind us. Those pages have already been written. The ink is dry. But we do a disservice to our story writing efforts, when we look only to the future. Because actually the past is not set in stone.
Dan Wakefield writes,
“the past isn’t just a set of experiences that are irrevocably set, like concrete blocks that can be hauled up out of memory and the unconscious to be reexamined. …The past can actually change. By remembering and writing down our past from a spiritual perspective (that is, taking into account its meaning in the context of our life’s journey)… we can sometimes see and understand it in a way that makes it different. Since our past experience only exists now in our own mind – it only “lives” in our recreation of it – our changed experience of it becomes the reality, and in that sense we really do have the power to change our past.
I don’t mean to suggest we could or should do this by forcing a past experience to be something different, by denying or rewriting history like a totalitarian government which recreates its nation’s past to fit the latest political dogma. I mean rather that our past can naturally change into something “more true” in the re-experiencing of it. The man’s adult view of the “tough guy” was in fact more accurate than his teenage perception of his friend.” (p. 22)
* * *
As we write the story of our lives, we are not only writing on the blank pages ahead of us. We can also write on the pages behind us. We can write between the lines, lifting up hidden meanings that were only hinted at, but not yet spelled out. We can scribble in the margins, fleshing out images, providing new explanations, introducing new characters, half-forgotten friends and teachers and students, whose role in our story we are only beginning to discover. We can add footnotes with subplots and twists to our story, that we neglected to include in our first draft.
Writing the story of our lives is a daunting undertaking. Our story can change in our hands in a twinkling. And so we lay down our words carefully, watching all the angles. We don’t know whether it is a dead end, or whether we found our real story. We may know tomorrow, or this time next year.
Each of us can write many different versions of our life story. (Like the girl in our children’s story this morning -) We can write about pirates and tornados and white sharks. We can write about polka dot pajamas, flat tires, and wedding invitations. We can write stories that are funny or sad, stories in which we are poor victims, or powerful heroes. But the best story is the one that comes from our own heart. The best story is the one that deep down in some long-encumbered self, we have been writing all our lives.
We will find the “truest” story of our lives when we look deeply into our own hearts. And I can tell you what we will find there. In our deepest heart, we will find love. We will find memories of the people who have loved us, the people we have loved, and the people we love today.
Our experience and our understanding of the love that has shaped us, the love contained in every chapter of our lives, the love that has guided us to the place we stand today - this very same love will serve as our most reliable guide for the path that lies ahead.
May every new chapter of our lives speak ever more clearly and deeply of our love.
Amen.
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