No Place Like Home

"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned."
-- Maya Angelou

Meditation: by Anne Sexton a poem entitled “Welcome Morning”

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook 

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry “hello there, Anne”

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning 

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it, 

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard

dies young.

Reading: by the Christian author Frederick Buechner from The Longing for Home (p. 7)

Home sweet home. There’s no place like home. Home is where you hang your hat…  What the word home brings to mind before anything else, I believe, is a place, and in its fullest sense not just a place where you happen to be living at the time… The word home summons up a place… which you have rich and complex feelings about, …a place where you feel you belong and which in some sense belongs to you, a place where you feel that all is somehow ultimately well even if things aren’t going all that well at any given moment. To think about home eventually leads you to think back to your childhood home, the place where your life started, the place which off and on throughout your life you keep going back to if only in dreams and memories and which is apt to determine the kind of place, perhaps a place inside yourself, that you spend the rest of your life searching for even if you are not aware that you are searching. I suspect that those who as children never had such a place in actuality had instead some kind of dream of such a home, which for them played an equal crucial part.  

Remarks: by Rev. Axel Gehrmann

Next week I will be heading home for Thanksgiving. My wife, Elaine, and I will be packing up our little Prius and driving to Washington, D. C., which is where her mother lives. But Washington, D. C., isn’t actually home for Elaine, it’s not where she is from. She is from Pittsburgh. And D. C. isn’t really home for me. I’m from Germany. Washington also isn’t really home for our son Noah, who will be driving with us, nor for our daughter Sophia, who now lives near Philadelphia, and will be taking the bus to D. C. and meet us there.  The kids consider Urbana home. And come to think of it, I’m not sure D. C. is what Elaine’s mother would consider home. She is from a small town in Pennsylvania called Ridgeway. And her husband is from Brooklyn. 

If home is the place we come from, then none of us are at home in Washington. Nevertheless, that is where we are all headed next week. And when we all get there, and when we all sit around the dining room table, I know it will nevertheless be home for us. 

It will feel like the place we belong, and that belongs to us. The dining room table will be home, shaped by our presence, but also by the memories each of us bring with us.

Home is a unique place that touches into rich and complex emotions. 

Sometimes we speak of this place as our home, our church home. The fewest of us were born here, but many have come here and remained here. Maybe we were searching for just this kind of place. Maybe not. 

I would like to welcome Tanja Hodges to the pulpit, so she can share some of her thoughts on the matter.

Reflections on Welcoming: by Tanja Hodges

So, in a move of full disclosure, I’ll tell you that I did not come to this church looking for a ‘church home’.  In fact, I came to this building looking for space to rent on a weeknight.  While touring the facility I saw a sign that said “Choir rehearsal: Saturday at 10 am.  Everybody’s welcome.”  At that point in my life I was completely ‘anti-church’ but I wanted to sing again so I decided to take a risk and show up. I did this while hoping that you all would let me sing, but not spill too much of that ‘religion stuff’ all over my perfectly good Sundays. I came to this place a devout Humanist, so perhaps you can imagine my surprise when that ‘religion stuff’ at this church became an important part of my life - just as important as the music to me.   I believe I was able to embrace a place here because I felt welcome and comfortable … almost from day one.  

Now, at this point I think I’m supposed to be talking about how all those nametags that people wear, or how the individual greeters made me feel welcome… but frankly, the nametags didn’t really move me very much and I didn’t even realize we had individual greeters in the lobby those first few years here because I never saw them – mainly because the choir arrives early for rehearsal on Sundays.  The thing that I feel I can honestly talk about that made me feel welcome wasn’t any specific organized welcoming effort, but instead something… well different.  To put it simply, what made me feel welcome was the way you treat one another, and therefore the way you treated me.  The thoughtfulness, gratitude, and engagement that each of you expresses so consistently and openly is what made me feel welcome.  

You may or may not realize it, but you have created a culture of kindness like none other I’ve ever encountered.  As a whole, this congregation is unfailingly helpful, along with being considerate and caring toward the feelings of others. For example, on an occasion or two one the pieces we have sung in choir may not have gone as well as we had intended, and on those Sundays people seem to really put effort into coming up between services and telling me –and other choir members I assume – how much they appreciate all the choir’s efforts and state that they think the piece must have taken a ton of hard work.   You all seem to live your faith in a very appreciative, caring and supportive way… that, in and of in itself, is very welcoming, in my opinion. Thanks for listening.  

Remarks: by Rev. Axel Gehrmann

Everybody is welcome here. This is what we say. This is what we believe. This is what we write on signs. This is the spirit we try to cultivate – a spirit of welcome, a culture of kindness. 

We strive to extend hospitality to all. We have nametags, and we have designated greeters, yes indeed. But hospitality is really much bigger than that. The spirit of hospitality we cherish can only be sustained if everyone joins in. 

I wonder what it would look like if hospitality wasn’t the work done by designated greeters for the sake of designated guests, but a spiritual practice shared by each and all of us.

MUSICAL INTERLUDE

Reading: by David Rynick, a member of the First Unitarian Church of Worcester, Massachusetts and also a Zen Buddhist teacher. This is from a piece entitled “The Spiritual Practice of Hospitality” (UUWorld, Summer 2007)

Practicing hospitality is not something we can appoint people to do, nor is it a set of techniques or behaviors we “use” on new people. Rather, it is an… intentional action,…  that creates the quality of relationships in our churches that will nourish newcomers and longtime members alike…

In a true encounter with another human being, we come face to face with the mystery of life. In some way, every other person, no matter how well we know them, will remain as mysterious to us as a country across the ocean we only read about in books. When we judge other people or other countries by our native standards, we miss the richness and texture of their life and wisdom. We need to learn to be good tourists—to be curious and respectful.

Too often we get stuck in the trap of believing we already know who someone else is. But whenever we encounter another human being with respect for this essential unknown, we create the possibility for something genuinely new to emerge. In every interaction, whether it is with a stranger or our longtime partner, we can be surprised by what we have not yet seen or even imagined…

It is possible to view hospitality as a duty, as something that imposes a claim on our attention from the outside. But I believe that as spiritual practice, hospitality becomes something quite different, an act of mutual [kindness] undertaken in a spirit of self-discovery…

In choosing this spiritual practice of hospitality, I live out the longing of my heart—creating a new reality for myself and the people around me. I reclaim my power to create the kind of world I want to live in. Gandhi was speaking of this kind of radical act when he said, “We must be the change we seek.”

We may have little control over conflicts in another part of the world, but we can practice truly honoring the preciousness of all human life by how we enter into relationship with each other. If we are serious about creating a more just, equitable, and compassionate world, we have to start with the room we are in.

Remarks: by Rev. Axel Gehrmann

Hospitality can take many different shapes. Each of us needs to find what works for us, what fits our particular interests, what speaks to our particular needs. 

I would like to welcome Nancy Dietrich to the pulpit, so she can share some of her thoughts on the matter.

Reflections on Welcoming: by Nancy Dietrich

My husband, Russ Rybicki, & I started attending the church about 5 years ago.  Lapsed Catholics at the time, we were looking for a community where, as social and religious liberals, we felt like we fit in, and where there were opportunities to get involved in causes we believed in and ways to get to know people in the church on a more personal level.  

My friend Maryly Crutcher, whom I met while serving on the board at Channing-Murray Foundation previously, invited me to attend. Russ & I had done a little bit of church shopping before coming here, but never really found a place that we felt like we would be comfortable becoming a part of the community. We found that here.

One part of helping to make us feel comfortable in this congregation has been the coffee hour after each of the services.  When Russ & I first started attending the church, many members of the church reached out to us at coffee hour, chatted with us, and made us feel like we belonged here.  In turn, I’ve found coffee hour to be an opportunity to reach out to others who are new to the congregation, to help make them feel welcome in the same way longstanding members of the church, who have since become friends, reached out to us.  

Another way I felt welcomed into this community was the new member potluck held at Cindy & Michael Loui’s when Russ & I first joined the church.  This is such a great outreach to the new members of the church community to get to know others in an informal, relaxed setting. It really made me feel welcomed.  

As I mentioned earlier, having opportunities to get involved with causes I believe in was also an important part of finding a church community for me.  Getting involved with the Hunger Initiative and the Social Action Committee gave me an opportunity to do this.  Being involved in both of those groups and feeling like I was making a difference was really essential in feeling welcome and feeling like I fit into this community.

My busy husband, Russ, has also felt welcomed into this congregation.  He has recently become involved in coordinating the UU Happy Hour, and enjoying socializing with other UUs in that way.  We have also enjoyed getting to know others through Circle Suppers, the annual service auction itself as well as the auction activities Russ & I have bid on and taken part in, and other social activities we’ve taken part in here.  It has really made us feel part of a community.

In summary, I really want to encourage newcomers to check out all of the small groups, committees, and other ways to really get involved in the life of the congregation.  I would also like to encourage longstanding members & friends to reach out to those with the “Hello” nametags and others whom you have not met before.  It really can make all the difference; it definitely did for me.  Thank you.  

PAUSE

Reading: by the British born professor of architecture and environmental planning Clare Cooper Marcus from House as a Mirror of Self: exploring the deeper meaning of home (p. 280) 

Home is not only a literal place but also a place of deep contentment in the innermost temple of the soul. Home is where the heart is runs the familiar saying. It has, I think, two levels of meaning. Heart or love is our connection to family and friends, to places and persons familiar and nurturing. But heart is also our innermost being, our soul. In this latter sense, home is where the heart is refers to that way of being, that place, that activity in which we are most fully and most deeply ourselves…

What I have learned… is that the human spirit is constantly in process, constantly on a journey of discovery… Without the journey, there may be stagnation, frustration, disempowerment. Thus, like it or not, we all have to leave home to find ourselves. However, the self we are seeking is not literally “out there”… it is always within. The paradox is that… we are each and every one of us always [and] never leaving home. To leave is to grow through adventure, risk taking, danger, excitement; to return is to find stability and strength at the still center of our being. Leaving home – and returning – is something we do every day and throughout our lives. 

Remarks: by Rev. Axel Gehrmann

Home is the place we come from and it is a dream of the heart. It is a reality deep within us, and it is a possibility we long to discover, which we strive to create. 

I would like to welcome Ryan Latvaitis to the pulpit, so he can share some of his thoughts on the matter.

Reflections on Welcoming: by Ryan Latvaitis

Some of you know I’m taking a class in Arabic at the U of I, where I also work.  I’ve nearly mastered the alphabet and am now working on expanding my vocabulary, and there’s a word I discovered that encapsulates some of my experience with home, and finding one’s home.  It’s الغربة, (al-ghurba) which is translated variously as longing for one’s homeland or native land, homesickness, and feeling a stranger in a strange place.  

You see, I’m an anxious person, fidgety and ill-at-ease among new people.  I have few friends, and I’ve always struggled to feel comfortable except in the most familiar of places.  Feeling at home is, thus, very important to me.  

الغربة describes well how I felt as I began to venture beyond the commute between work and home once we moved here in July of 2012.  I was searching for things to make this place pleasant, to feel connected, rooted.  One thing that helped was subscribing to the newspaper, which kept me posted on local happenings.  

One other thing helped even more.  One day in the fall of 2013 my now-fiancé Christy said that we should stop by the Unitarian Universalist Church.  I had mentioned that I missed the experience of church, but didn’t want to swallow someone else’s dogma.  We came, we saw, we liked it.  The people were open and warm, and everyone eager to get to know us.  It offered intellectual stimulation in book discussion groups, a conviction that the world can be improved through social action, and the opportunity to worship in my own way among a loving community.  The three-week UU orientation sessions Axel hosted provided a safe forum for questions about what Unitarian Universalism was.  My feelings of strangeness, of الغربة, have been diminishing since our first Sunday here.

I recall in particular one moment of this transition – of becoming not just UUs, but Urbana UUs.  I opened my mailbox to receive my first Uniter.  It felt special, like I was a member of a community.  There is something different about a physical thing than a digital thing.  Maybe in this way I’m old-fashioned, or less charitably, a luddite.  I maintain the soul savors a letter more than an email, much in the same way that being here is more satisfying than listening to the sermons online.  

We’re in a time of change in this church, and we would do well to analyze how we do things.  Yet so too we should be careful.  Buzzwords like innovation, disruption, and the popularity of tech startup culture have been adopted by wider society as marks of sophistication.  We are admonished by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook to “Move fast and break things.”  This is not advice one should follow in one’s own home.  

I urge you all to think carefully about how this church is home to you, and how it could be made better.  It is only by our labor that this wonderful place will prosper.  

Remarks: by Axel Gehrmann

Many of us come here searching for a place where we can feel connected, rooted, and accepted; a place that is open and warm.

This place of our dreams is something we are called to create. It is a radical new reality. It is the world we want to live in. Its hallmarks are acceptance, respect, and kindness. Its expressions are thoughtfulness, gratitude, and engagement.

Whether or not we call this place our religious home, the task of making this a welcoming place is a religious practice that involves all of us – regardless whether we are here today for the first time, or have been here all our lives. 

True hospitality is nothing other than the most straightforward expression of our firm belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Practicing real, heart-felt hospitality is the first step we need to take in our efforts to build a world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.

Mahatma Gandhi firmly believed we can each be the change we seek. And I agree. We can.

We all come from different places. 

But when we come together here, 

may we make this one place where everyone is welcome. 

May this be a place where we can gather around a welcome table

to share our memories of happiness, and our dreams of love. 

May the spirit we find here inspire us to change the world.

So be it. Amen.

The Center of the Universe

"We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us."
-- Neil deGrasse Tyson

Meditation: by the British-born scholar of Easter philosophy and Zen Buddhist practitioner Alan Watts

If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death, or shall I say, death implies life, you can feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke. But you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. 

I am not trying to sell you on this idea in the sense of converting you to it, I want you to play with it. I want you to think of its possibilities. I am not trying to prove it. I am just putting it forward as a possibility of life to think about. 

So then, let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power, within one night to dream seventy-five years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure. And after several nights of seventy-five years of total pleasure each, you would say, “Well that was pretty great. But now let’s have a surprise. Let’s have a dream which isn’t under control, where something is going to happen to me, that I don’t know what it is going to be.” And you would dig that too, and come out of that and think “Wow, that was a close shave, wasn’t it?” Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles what you would dream. And finally you would dream where you are now. 

You would dream the dream of living the life you are actually living today. That would be within the infinite multiplicity of choices you would have – of playing that you weren’t God. Because the nature of the Godhead, according to this idea, is to play that he is not.

So in this idea everyone is fundamentally the ultimate reality, not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the Self the deep down whatever there is. And you’re all that. Only you’re pretending that you’re not.   

Reading: by the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson from Death By Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries (p. 229-230)

Many generations of thinkers, both religious and scientific, have been led astray by anthropocentric assumptions, while others were simply led astray by ignorance. In the absence of dogma and data, it is safer to be guided by the notion that we are not special, which is generally known as the Copernican principle, named for Nicolaus Copernicus, of course, who, in the mid-1500s, put the Sun back in the middle of our solar system where it belongs. In spite of a third-century B.C. account of a Sun-centered universe, proposed by the Greek philosopher Aristarchus, the Earth-centered universe was by far the most popular view for most of the last 2,000 years. Codified by the teachings of Aristotle and Ptolemy, and later by the preaching of the Roman Catholic Church, people generally accepted Earth as the center of all motion and of the known universe. This fact was self-evident. The universe not only looked that way, but God surely made it so.

While the Copernican principle comes with no guarantees that it will forever guide us to cosmic truths, it's worked quite well so far: not only is Earth not in the center of the solar system, but the solar system is not in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy is not in the center of the universe, and it may come to pass that our universe is just one of many that comprise a multiverse. And in case you're one of those people who thinks that the edge may be a special place, we are not at the edge of anything either.

Reading: by the American author Bill Bryson from A Short History of Nearly Everything (p. 17)

As the biologist J. B. S. Haldane once famously observed: “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.”

The analogy that is usually given for explaining the curvature of space is to try to imagine someone from a universe of flat surfaces, who had never seen a sphere, being brought to Earth. No matter how far he roamed across the planet’s surface, he would never find and edge. He might eventually return to the spot where he had started, and would of course be utterly confounded to explain how that had happened. Well, we are in the same position in space as our puzzled flatlander, only we are flummoxed by a higher dimension.

Just as there is no place where you can find the edge of the universe, so there is no place where you can stand at the center and say: “This is where it all began. This is the centerpoint of it all.” We are all at the center of it all.

The Center of the Universe

A Sermon Delivered on November 16, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

Where is the center of the universe? If earth isn’t the center of the universe, is the center of the universe somewhere out there in outer space, maybe where the Big Bang happened billions of years ago?

I guess not. Scientists say there is no place where you can say: This is the center. This is where it began.

This morning, I am happy to tell you, I have the privilege of sharing with you a truth even the most respected of the world’s scientists have not discovered: I know where the center of the universe is. And I will tell you.

Amazingly, and luckily for us, it isn’t very far away. It’s actually just 17 miles from here. My wife, Elaine, and I have driven by several times, and we didn’t even realize it.

I discovered the truth earlier this week perusing the archives of the Urbana Free Library, where I found a book that will perhaps now become world famous, once the news of this discovery spreads. The book is entitled “Our Village History, Philo, 1875-2000: the center of the universe.” In it, I found “The Story of How Philo Became the Center of Universe,” and even photographic proof: a photo of the Philo water tower with words clearly painted on it, that say “Philo, IL – Center of the Universe.”

The story goes like this: 

“It was Thanksgiving 1969 and the Narbey Khachaturian family was in India where Professor Khachaturian was serving as consultant to the US Agency for International Development, for the advancement of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur.

Teenagers Greg and Jon were attending the American International School in New Delhi and had brought a friend, Bill Stollberg, home for the holiday… The family took Bill to Bitur, a place by the Ganges River that was of significance to the Indian people.

It was so significant, in fact, that there was a small shrine-like area that sheltered a plaque that read “Bitur – The Center of Universe.”

“Oh, that is not true,” the boys told their friend. “PHILO is the center of the universe.”

[And so it was, the residents of Philo agreed… in the mid- 1980s] the Philo Village Board voted to have this geographical news painted on the water tower…. [And] in 1992, the Philo Woman’s Club had shirts and caps made with the Center of the Universe Declaration.”

* * *

Though clearly meant as a joke, the story of the Khachaturians does point to a profound and perhaps universal human perception: We each live in the center of our own personal universe.  

Our universe is made up of the places we have been, and the people in our lives we care about. We are surrounded, first and foremost, by friends and family members closest to us. Beyond them, in concentric circles around us, are our casual acquaintances: the colleagues and neighbors we see every week. And beyond them are fellow citizens in our city, whose names we don’t know, but who we see on the street or in the grocery store. And then there are strangers across the country and around the world who we have never met, who we don’t much care about. Most of the time we forget they even exist.

We are each in the center of our own universe, each most concerned with what affects us directly – the events of our lives that make us happy or sad, personal accomplishments or personal losses. When a project we have long been working on is successfully completed, when a family member is in the hospital, or when a friend of ours dies.

We each have our own distinct perspective on the universe that extends in all directions around us. And from our subjective point of view, we are in the middle of the universe. 

From an objective point of view, of course, none of us are at the center of the universe. And neither is Philo. 

* * *

From an objective point of view, Copernicus is right – the earth isn’t the center of the solar system. We are traveling around the sun, just like the other planets close by, and the countless asteroids and comets zipping through space – one of which now has a small European probe on it, which landed there successfully this week. The Rosetta spacecraft was traveling 34,400 miles per hour, and caught up with the comet 334 million miles from the sun, after a ten-year chase.

The Copernican principle says, the universe does not revolve around us. Humanity is not the measure of all things. And likewise those of us who imagine we are the crown of God’s creation are likely mistaken.

Copernicus demoted humans from the center of the universe. He is often cast as a champion of science and challenger of religion. But this simplistic story line doesn’t do justice to the subtleties of either religion or science.

In a book entitled Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion the intellectual historian Dennis Danielson says, it seems we can’t utter Copernicus’s name without at once feeling the urge to say he “dethroned” the earth or us humans. Danielson writes, 

“Almost every week new examples of the same claim appear in newspapers, on the web, and on the syllabuses of college courses – it is repeated so often, and by such respectable voices, that it has become like a perennial mold of our collective mental cupboards and a gratuitous blight on the planetary morale.”

What this intellectual cliché overlooks, however, is that for Copernicus being in the center was not necessarily good, and being removed from the center was not necessarily bad. So, for instance, a few centuries earlier,

“Thomas Aquinas, the foremost Christian philosopher of the Middle Ages, [said] that “in the universe, earth – that all the spheres encircle and that, as for place, lies in the center – is the most material [the lowliest] and coarsest of all bodies.” …[And] Dante, writing his Inferno in the early fourteenth century, placed the lowest pit of hell at the very midpoint of the earth, the dead center of the whole universe.”

Another assumption about Copernicus is that “in allegedly reducing the status of the earth, he also struck a blow against religion, particularly Abrahamic religions, which supposedly require the cosmic centrality of humankind.” But, as Danielson points out, in both Jewish and Christian teachings humans are not generally portrayed as the central masters of the universe, but rather the scriptures describe our human “smallness, weakness, and often moral incapacity against the immense greatness, goodness, and otherness of the Creator.” For instance in the Psalms it says: “When I look at your [God’s] heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them.” (8:3-4; NRSV).

Yes, it is true, Galileo got in trouble with the Roman Catholic Church for promoting the ideas Copernicus introduced. But Galileo’s offense was not that he challenged church doctrine. It was that he challenged the scientific authority of Aristotle, long accepted by the church. The conflict was not between science and religion, but between new science and old science.

* * *

Casting Copernicus and Galileo as protagonists in a long-standing battle between religion and science is really a gross simplification of both scientific research and religious thought.

For centuries, and especially since Einstein, modern science has shown us that the world is not as it seems. Time and space are relative. The objective world Newton imagined cannot explain the subatomic and astronomical universe in the midst of which we live. In a quantum world, it turns out, subjectivity is not an aberration but an essential aspect of the way the world works.  

We depend on our observations and perceptions to make sense of the world in which we live. And yet our perceptions play tricks on us. Our eyes are playing tricks on us when we think the earth is flat, because it looks flat. We know of course, it isn’t. 

Our senses are playing tricks on us, when we think the earth on which we are standing is stationary, because, of course it isn’t, it is speeding around the sun, and spinning at a dizzying rate. 

Our senses are playing tricks on us when we think the objects around us are solid: the pews on which you are sitting, the pulpit behind which I am standing – we know these objects are made out of atoms, which in turn are made up of particles that whirl around huge empty spaces. (Do you remember the sermon Pam Blosser delivered a few months ago? She said, “there is a common analogy about the structure of an atom. Imagine with me now that the nucleus of an atom is like a fly in the center of a sports stadium and the electrons are tiny, tiny gnats circling the stadium…”)

The color red we perceive is simply a particular wavelength of light. And all the colors we can see are only a fraction of the light surrounding us. And yet still we cling to these illusions our senses provide for us.

* * *

Alan Watts asks us to imagine what it would be like to awaken from this illusion. Imagine the universe is not what it seems. 

Imagine that the life we are living is a dream. A dream we are making up as we go along. A dream that has twists and turns we can’t anticipate, and yet which we can influence. 

We need to wake up from our illusion, Watts says, we need to realize “that our real body is not just what’s inside the skin, but is rather our whole, total external environment as well, [we need to realize we are inseparable from the world around us] because if we don’t experience ourselves that way, we mistreat our environment.  We treat it as an enemy.  We try to beat it into submission; and when we do that, disaster follows.  We exploit the world we live in.  We don’t treat it with the love, gentleness and respect that it so richly deserves.”

My senses tell me I am THE center of the universe. My senses tell me that I am more important than anyone else, that MY health and happiness is more important than anything else, and that the people closest to me, the ones I love, are the only people who matter. But this is an illusion.

We are not more important than everyone else. Everyone else is just as important as we are. Everyone’s claim to health and happiness, to prosperity and safety, to freedom and justice, is just as valid as our own. Every single human being is at the center of the universe. 

If we were to awaken from our dream, if we were to pierce the illusions with which our senses surround us, we would realize that we are each an expression of the entire cosmos. Alan Watts says: “We are each something the whole universe is doing, the way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing.” The wave is the ocean. The ocean is the wave.

We like to think we are the single center of the universe, as if that were a good thing. But imagining ourselves and only those closest to us in the center of the universe, ends up isolating us, separating us from the rest of the world. And instead of being part of the ocean, we are just a little puddle of water, surrounded by dry land on all sides, all alone. This is an illusion.

Both science and religion tell us we are inseparable from all existence. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. When we are able to awaken from our dream, we know that this is true. 

Mindful of this truth, may our every word and deed 

be guided by a spirit of love, gentleness and respect 

for all people, and the whole world.

Amen. 

Hidden Treasures

"It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure."
-- Joseph Campbell

Meditation: by Mary Jean Irion (from A Grateful Heart, edited by M. J. Ryan, p. 111)

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.

Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart.

Let me not pass by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.

Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so.

One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, 

or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut,

or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world,

your return.

Reading: by the entrepreneur, author, and blogger Chris Guillebeau from The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life (p. 7) 

People have always been captivated by quests. History’s earliest stories tell of epic journeys and grand adventures. Whether the story is African, Asian, or European, the plotline is the same: A hero sets off in search of something elusive that has the power to change both their self and the world.

In the Judeo-Christian story of creation, Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden and sent to toil the earth. In the Buddhist story, the question and practice and struggle is emphasized over creation – sacred texts skip straight to the quest for enlightenment.

The world’s best-known literature reflects our desire to hear about struggle and sacrifice in pursuit of a goal. From Aesop’s Fables to Arabian Nights, many classic stories are about adventure and quests…

In modern times, Hollywood knows that quests are an easy sell. Consider the blockbuster franchises Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, and countless others. The tougher the odds and the higher the stakes, the better…

Most of these quest stories are told over and over in different ways, often with a fair amount of exaggeration. They can be engaging stories, but for the most part they aren’t real. We enjoy them because, for a brief time, they have the power to alter our belief in what’s possible… Maybe there really is a holy grail somewhere out there, just waiting to be discovered. 

Reading: by the Guatemalan writer Jeanne Mendez (Santa Cruz la Laguna), a piece on “Keepsakes,” that appeared in Sun Magazine (Feb. 2014) 

We kept it in a teapot my husband’s mother had given us years before. It was a tiny skeleton key, dull silver in color with a cloverleaf design at one end, and it unlocked my husband’s “treasure chest,” a beautiful green wooden box carved with flowers and leaves.

When I had spotted the box at the secondhand shop near our New York City apartment, I’d known right away that he would love it. I gave it to him that Christmas with three chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil at the bottom and the key taped to the gift tag.

“Every boy needs a treasure chest,” I said.

At first he used it as a place to keep his pipes and roach clips and nickel bags of pot. Eventually other treasures found their way inside: An old Indian coin. A torn piece of a dollar bill whose other pieces were kept by four friends. (They’d planned to get together and reunite the dollar in Central Park in the year 2000, no matter what, but some of them died in Vietnam.) A Carter/Mondale campaign button. A lock of hair from our son’s first haircut. A photo, taken on our honeymoon, of my husband mooning me from a secluded lake. A business card from Famous Ray’s Pizza on West 11th Street — our favorite.

In the days after his funeral, when I was alone, I’d open the box at night and breathe in the smell of old wood and carefully pick each item up. Then I’d put them back and turn the key in the lock.

It was nothing, really: just a grown man’s treasures in a tiny little box.

Hidden Treasures

A Sermon Delivered on November 9, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

In the Gehrmann family, searching for hidden treasures is a well-established family tradition. Ever since our kids were old enough to be actively involved in their birthday celebrations, rather than simply presenting them with their gifts, Elaine and I would hide them around the house. The kids’ challenge was to find them, with the help of little clues we wrote on slips of paper. 

Now that they are ostensibly adults, our kids help set up the treasure hunt for their parents’ birthdays. So for instance, on my birthday last month, our daughter Sophia, who was home from college, was in charge of writing the clues. Since we have a shared family fondness for movie trivia, the clues touched on TV shows and videos we had watched together. For instance:

Frank Underwood's now President,

Now he's got the power,

If you go upstairs,

You'll find something hidden in the _________.

(congregational response: “shower”)

and

Remember in Superbad?

The baddest kid was McLovin,

If you're looking for more presents,

Check in the __________.

(congregational response: “oven”)

* * *

Searching for hidden treasures is a game lots of children like to play. But a fascination with treasure hunts isn’t limited to the young. A lot of fully grown adults have made the search for hidden riches a serious hobby, and sometimes even a full-time job – whether exploring ancient ruins, dark caves, desert islands, or the watery ocean depths.

I have never been a very serious treasure hunter myself. But I confess I do get a vicarious jolt of excitement when I hear of treasure hunters who actually do strike gold. 

A while back the New York Times reported on an unemployed British man living on welfare who made a remarkable find in the field of an English farmer. “It was the stuff of dreams: a hoard of early Anglo-Saxon treasure, …dating from the seventh century [with] more than 1,500 pieces of intricately worked gold and silver.” Experts said it was one the most important discoveries in British archeological history. One of them said looking at the trove of priceless artifacts brought tears to her eyes.

In my mind the best part about this particular discovery is that, as the article said, it wasn’t “the outcome of a carefully planned archaeological enterprise, but the product of a lone amateur stumbling [around] with a metal detector.”

The amateur’s name is Terry Herbert. Terry Herbert spent the last eighteen years, or so, scouring fields and back lots without finding anything of much value. But ever since that day in July when his metal detector started to beep in the farmer’s field, he says, he has been seeing piles of gold in his sleep.

He says, on the day of his discovery he changed the mantra that he usually used for good luck. “I have this phrase that I say sometimes — ‘Spirits of yesterday, take me where the coins appear’ — but on that day I changed ‘coins’ to ‘gold.’ I don’t know why I said it that day, but I think somebody was listening.” (“Experts Awed by Anglo-Saxon Treasure,” by John F. Burns, NYT, Sep. 25, 2009)

* * *

Now some would say that our impulse to hunt for hidden treasure is similar to the temptation that sometimes drives us to buy lottery tickets hoping to win “Mega Millions” or the “Lucky Day Lotto” jackpot. It is all about money, and dreams of being rich and never needing to work another day in our lives. It is an expression of our baser greedy instincts that imagine the acquisition of worldly treasure as the key to human happiness – a kind of secular salvation.

Religious people have long known that this is not the way to really find happiness. If our goal is real happiness, personal fulfillment, wholeness, a sense of spiritual health, and a life of purpose and meaning – then we need to turn our attention to a different kind of treasure.

The Christian scriptures offer a clue in the words attributed to Jesus. He said, don’t lay up treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up your treasures in heaven, where neither moth or rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Spiritual teachings hint at a different kind of treasure, a treasure we can’t hold in our hands, but in our hearts. A treasure that is not material, but mythical. Some kind of “holy grail” somewhere out there, just waiting to be discovered.

* * *

In my family, we know all about the Holy Grail. That’s what the silly medieval knights were looking for in the classic British movie spoof “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” It’s what Indiana Jones was trying to find in the movie “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” a mysterious cup that holds magical healing powers, and the promise of eternal life.

But these are only two modern takes on a much older story. As Alan Lupack, a professor of English at the University of Rochester, explains, the Holy Grail first found its way into the literary imagination in a 12^th century re-telling of the King Arthur legends. The Holy Grail was thought to be the actual cup from which Christ drank during the last supper. The same cup Joseph of Arimathea used to catch his blood, as he hung on the cross. As the story goes, Joseph brought the grail to England, where it remained, guarded by Joseph’s descendants. The keepers of the grail needed to be of pure thought, and word, and deed. When one of them failed to maintain this spiritual clarity, the grail disappeared. In the King Arthur legend, the grail quest was not a treasure hunt, but rather the highest spiritual pursuit.

* * *

The scholar of mythology, Joseph Campbell offers a different angle on the origins of the Holy Grail. One ancient story says the Grail was brought down from heaven to earth by angels – neutral angels. You see, this happened during the war in heaven between God and Satan, when all the angels caught up in the conflict took sides, some with Satan and some with God. The Grail was delivered to earth by the few neutral angels, right in the middle of the battlefield between the forces of good and the forces of evil.

And so the Grail represents the spiritual path that leads between the opposing polarities of good and evil, fear and desire… and charts a middle way. “The Grail represents the fulfillment of the highest spiritual potentialities of the human consciousness,” Campbell says.

* * *

Searching for spiritual treasures is a tricky enterprise. It is often a confounding adventure that can leave us feeling as if we were on a hopeless wild goose chase. Trying to follow our dreams, we may find ourselves traveling to distant lands, like poor Isaac, in the Hasidic story, who heeds the voice he heard in a dream, and heads off on a journey through forests, over mountains, across rivers, to the place where he thinks his treasure must be. Only to discover that what he is looking for is actually buried under the stove of the house in which he had been living all his life. His treasure was right there.

Where can we find our treasure? Is it close by or is it far away? Is it in heaven or on earth? Can it be held in our hands or only in our hearts? Is it here now or will we find it in time to come? Heck – would we even know a treasure if we saw it? 

Maybe our greatest treasures arrive without our knowledge. And maybe we don’t even notice when they slip away. Maybe we have eyes and don’t see. Maybe we have ears and don’t hear. 

For as long as men and women have practiced religion, for as long as we have worshiped and prayed, for as long as we have believed and doubted – the spiritual quest has had the same goal: to teach us to open our eyes and ears, to open our minds and hearts, to the real world and the fullness of life. When we truly learn this lesson, we will find surprising and unimagined treasures.

At its best, religious ritual can help us on our way. Joseph Campbell tells the story of a ritual he experienced that was remarkably effective. It took place years ago in Kentucky. It was arranged by two couples from the University of Vermont. It involved forty-nine people, and Campbell was one of them.

Starting off in the morning, they were divided into seven groups of seven, and were told to each spend the day thinking about seven things without which they wouldn’t want to live. “What are seven things for which you feel your life is worth living?” they were asked. After thinking about that all day, they were each supposed to gather up seven little objects, small enough to hold in your hand, to represent the seven cherished things. Seven treasures. And you were supposed to know which was which. 

In the evening they went down a wooded road in the dark to the mouth of a cave. At the entrance of the cave was a man wearing a mask of a dog. This was Cerberus, of Greek mythology, guarding the gate of hell. He put his hand out and said, “Give me that which you least cherish.” When you gave him one of your seven little objects, he let you enter the cave, carrying the six remaining things you most cherished. As you slowly continued further into the depths of the cavernous darkness, you passed five further stations where you were asked to give up the one thing you cherish least. Until you were left with one object in your hand that represented what you treasured most. 

“And you found out what it was, believe me,” Campbell says. “You really, really did. And the order in which you gave up your treasures was revelatory: you really knew what your order of values was.” 

Then, finally, you came to an exit guarded by two people. You had to pass through the middle, right between them. But before you could go, you had to give up that which you most treasured.

“I can tell you that ritual worked,” Campbell says. 

“All of the participants with whom I’ve talked had an actual experience of moska, “release,” when they had given up their last treasure. One damned fool was the exception. He [didn’t] give up anything. That’s how seriously the ritual was taken. When he was asked to give up something, he just stooped down, picked up a pebble, and handed that over. That’s the refusal of [life’s] call… 

The exciting thing to me was the actual experience. It was a [joyous feeling]. Watching your earlier [objects] go really did change your feeling for the treasures you’d given up. It increased your love for them without the tenacity. I was amazed.” (from Reflections on the Art of Living, excerpted in God in All Worlds, edited by L. Vardey, p. 214-215)

A spiritual treasure hunt can be perplexing and paradoxical. When we let our treasures go, we may discover that they continue to remain with us. Rooted in the depths of our being they remain unmistakably and unshakably present. When we open our hands, we may realize that the treasures in our hearts remain more secure then ever, where neither moth nor rust can consume, nor thieves can steal them.  

* * *

It may be that we all need a treasure chest. Every child needs a treasure chest. A little box with a tiny key, in which to place our most cherished treasures. Piles of gold and silver don’t fit into it. And frankly, the tiny treasures that belong into this box are more precious than gold. 

Jeanne Mendez knew the true value of her husband’s treasures: the torn piece of a dollar bill, the lock hair from their son’s first haircut, the photo from their honeymoon, the card from the favorite pizza place. 

If you had a tiny treasure chest, what would you put in it?

The objects we most treasure, of course, are only symbols of something else. The objects we accumulate, and sometimes hoard, are symbols of happiness, memories of love, tokens of affection, reminders of the dreams we once had, and the dreams we still hope to fulfill.

When we lay up these treasures - the real treasures of our lives - we aren’t cultivating greed, we are cultivating gratitude. 

In our search for life’s greatest treasures, we may not need to travel to distant lands. Maybe all we need to do is allow ourselves to be guided by gratitude. Then we may learn that every day is a treasure. Then our eyes and ears will be opened. Then our hearts will be full of joy.

May we have the wisdom to recognize the clues all around us.

May we have the courage to pick up the key that will unlock 

The hidden treasures of our hearts.

Grateful for yesterday’s gifts of love,

May the goal of our quest be to build a better tomorrow.

Amen.

Seasons of the Soul

"The rational soul wanders round the whole world and through the encompassing void, and gazes into infinite time..."
-- Marcus Aurelius

Meditation: by May Sarton from “The Autumn Sonnets”

If I can let you go as trees let go

Their leaves, so casually, one by one;

If I can come to know what they know,

That fall is the release, the consummation,

Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit

Would not distemper the great lucid skies

This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.

If I can take the dark with open eyes

And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange

(For love itself may need a time of sleep),

And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,

Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,

The strong root still alive under the snow,

Love will endure - if I can let you go.

Reading:  by the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano from Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History 

November 2 – Day of the Dead: 

In Mexico tonight, as every year on this night, the living host the dead, and the dead eat and drink and dance and get caught up on all the latest gossip from the neighborhood.

But when night comes to a close, when church bells and first light bid adieu, some of the dead get lively and try to hide in the shrubbery or behind the tombs in the graveyard. People chase them out with brooms: “Get going, “Leave us in peace,” “We don’t want to see you until next year.”

You see, the dead are real layabouts.

In Haiti, a long-standing tradition forbids carrying the casket straight to the cemetery. The funeral cortege has to twist and turn and zigzag to fool the one who has died, so he won’t be able to find his way back home.

The living minority defends itself as best it can.

Reading: by the Japanese born author Kyoki Mori from an essay entitled “Between the Forest and the Well: Notes on Death” (The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death, p. 45) 

Everything we say about death is actually about life. I like to imagine being dead as an endless run because I’ve always felt the most alive while running. My grandmother, who valued family above all else, longed to be reunited with her ancestors and descendants through Buddha. To her, death was a huge family gathering with plenty of food. Every morning while alive, she prayed to the family dead at the Buddhist altar by offering them tea, rice, beans, vegetables, and fruits; then she went to the kitchen to cook breakfast for her children and grandchildren. In death as in life, she wanted to be inside that same cycle of comfort and respect.

My ex-husband, Chuck, hated finishing any projects, especially those he enjoyed. In college, he declared a new major every couple of years, always thrilled with his choice until he got close to fulfilling his requirement. He took ten years to complete his B.S., and when we divorced, he was enrolled in his third master’s program as a no-degree candidate. It’s no surprise, then, that he believed in reincarnation. His ideal death was an opportunity to start over indefinitely.

Reading: by Stephen Levine from Unattended Sorrow: Recovering from Loss and Reviving the Heart (p. 217)

We are reincarnated from day to day. We receive a fresh start with each awakening.

A woman [dealing with grief] who spoke of having lost everything, “and particularly my heart,” said that when she lost love she had lost her life. But in time, she felt something stirring beneath the surface when she read of the suffering of others, especially children. Quite to her surprise, she found beneath the reservoir of her sorrow so much love and another life to be lived.

As the heart revives, many people find a new life beneath their sorrow.

The death of a loved one sometimes marks the end of one incarnation and the beginning of another. Sometimes it is not until we suffer a great loss that we notice all the healing that awaits.

Seasons of the Soul

A Sermon Delivered on November 2, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

This year in preparation for Halloween, I joined a few others at the home of Barb and Bill Childers for their fourth annual Pumpkinpalooza. A Pumpkinpalooza, in case you were wondering, involves gathering for a relaxed afternoon of snacks and hot cider, followed by a delicious buffet dinner. But the main event is a serious collective effort in pumpkin carving. 

It’s been years since I’ve made a jackolantern. And even then my involvement was usually merely a matter of supervising my kids, looking over their shoulders, admonishing them to be careful as they handled kitchen knives that looked dangerously big and sharp in their little hands. 

Last Sunday, among the large selection of pumpkins of all shapes and sizes at the Childers’s, I found a midsized one that seemed just right. Picnic tables had been set up in the back yard, covered with big plastic tarps, and equipped with all the tools and paraphernalia needed for the impending mayhem.  After an initial period of indecision and reticence in scooping out the gooey pumpkin innards, I got into it. In the end I was pretty happy with my work: two big googly-eyes, and a menacing mouth with three crooked teeth.

Back home, I proudly displayed my handiwork to Elaine, my wife. She dutifully positioned it on our front porch, and added a candle on Halloween Eve. By this time, the squirrels had enhanced its artistic expressiveness by eating away the left side of the pumpkin face, making it look much more monstrous.

* * *

The playfulness of Halloween - the cute little kids in costumes tromping up to our doors asking for treats – provides some welcome levity, at a time of year when our spirits might otherwise start to sink.

The days are growing shorter, and colder, and darker. The leaves are beautiful. But the fact that they dying, that they are falling from their branches, and returning to earth and soil – this is an unmistakable reminder of the sad truth that all things living must invariable die. 

For everything there is a season, the poet says: a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to time to keep, and a time to throw way; a time to be born and a time to die. 

There is a time when our life begins, and there is a time when our life ends. Much in life is uncertain. But one thing is undisputed: it ends with death.

* * *

But is death really the end? Maybe the dead do not disappear into oblivion, maybe they continue to exist somewhere else. Maybe in a Netherworld with the god Hades, where Persephone spends half the year, and where Orpheus tries to save his beloved wife. Maybe in a heavenly world surrounded by seraphim and cherubim, and a heavenly host of other angels. Maybe the dead are reunited with their ancestors sitting around a big family table, with plenty of food. Or maybe they are lazy layabouts, spending their days and nights hiding in the shrubbery, or behind tombstones in the cemetery. 

Our bodies are buried, and return to the earth – ashes to ashes, dust to dust – but maybe some aspect of our existence continues on. Some kind of spirit. Something like a soul. 

Hindus imagine something called Atman, that dwells deep within each of us. In the Bhagavad-Gita it is described like this:

Unborn, undying,  

Never ceasing, 

Never beginning, 

Deathless, birthless,  

Unchanging for ever…

Worn-out garments 

Are shed by the body: 

Worn-out bodies 

Are shed by the dweller 

Within the body. 

New bodies are donned 

By the dweller, like garments. 

Not wounded by weapons, 

Not burned by fire, 

Not dried by the wind, 

Not wetted by water:

Such is the Atman…

In Hindu thought, individual souls enter the world mysteriously for reasons we cannot fully explain. As the religious scholar Huston Smith puts it, our souls are 

“like bubbles that form on the on the bottom of a boiling teakettle, they make their way through the water (universe) until they break free into the limitless atmosphere of illumination (liberation). They begin as the souls of the simplest forms of life, but they do not vanish with the death of their original bodies,” instead the soul migrates from one body to the next. (The World’s Religions, p.63)

Reincarnation is an idea that may appeal to those of us who feel we don’t quite have enough hours in the day to do everything we would like. Or those of us like Kyoki Mori’s ex-husband, who are uncomfortable with closure, who hate finishing things – whether college degrees or home improvement projects. Reincarnation allows us to imagine we will have endless opportunities to start over again. “In my next life, I will learn to play the piano.” “In my next life I will be a gardener.” “In my next life, I will be more adventurous.”  

The scientist Richard Dawkins is an avowed atheist with little patience for religious belief. He imagines a scientific form of reincarnation. Rather than in a soul, he believes in the immortality of the genes contained in our DNA. A gene does not grow senile; he writes 

“it is no more likely to die when it is a million years old than when it is only a hundred. It leaps from body to body down the generations, manipulating body after body in its own way and for its own ends, abandoning a succession of mortal bodies before they sink into senility and death. The genes are the immortals… When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever.” (The Selfish Gene, p.34)

* * * 

It may be comforting to imagine that the soul, or some aspect of our biological or spiritual self will live on forever. But the danger is that we end up denying the reality of death, and thus lose out on life.

* * *

Grief is painful. But it is necessary, it is healthy, and ultimately it is good. And though death is probably the greatest loss we must face, it is certainly not the only loss we will grieve in the course of our lives.

Stephen Levine writes, 

“Nothing is more natural than grief, no emotion more common to our daily experience. It’s an innate response to loss in a world where everything is impermanent. We don’t know what to do with our pain, and we never have. We have been told to bury our feelings, to keep a stiff upper lip, to “get over it and get on with our lives” as though loss were not an inevitable part of life…” (p. 3)

He compares the pain of sudden grief to the sharp ache of rope burns, when something we held onto firmly and fiercely is suddenly yanked out of our grasp. 

The death of someone we love is one of countless losses most of us will face in the course of our lives. Levine speaks of a multitude of ungrieved everyday losses: 

“losses of love betrayed, of trusts broken, of lies sent and received, of words spoken that can never be retrieved, and of the repeated bruises left by unkindness. It is the long-delayed grief of miscarriages… lost opportunities, a thousand and one insults, and clutching misgivings that ricochet in the mind and instill restlessness and depression.”

All of these little losses, if left unattended, will weigh us down, leaving us dispirited and depressed. 

* * *

It was Elizabeth Kübler-Ross who famously described five stages most people need to pass through in order to work through unresolved grief. These stages include: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.

Stephen Levine imagines just three stages. The first is to soften the pain. This means, rather than avoiding the sorrow, or tightening up in an effort to protect ourselves from the hurt, we allow ourselves to feel our feelings, even though they are painful. 

The second stage is to cultivate mercy or forgiveness. This means trying to be gentle and compassionate toward ourselves, in the midst of our pain. Or, as he puts it, “opening… the fist that grabs the pain, exposing it to a willingness to let love in… We start to flood the area once filled with the hatred for our pain with a soothing, cooling kindness.”

The third and final stage in healing our sadness involves making peace with it. Grief is war, he says. It is an inner conflict between hope and despair, between trust and doubt, between acceptance and resistance. Healing means making peace among all the conflicting voices clamoring within us. “To have closure is to make peace with your pain.” 

This is important work, not only for the sake of our own spiritual health and well-being, but also for the sake of those around us. The unresolved conflicts that we carry within our hearts, invariably take shape in our lives. Or as Levine puts it, “the less we make peace with our pain, the more we tend to make war on others.”

* * *

The holidays at this time of year – whether Halloween, Day of the Dead, or All Souls – encourage us to remember the dead. The dead are always close by. They like to linger among us, and catch up on the gossip. 

Death wears many different masks. Some of them frightening, some of them familiar, some of the surprising, some of them expected. We never know for sure how or when death will arrive. 

My grandmother lived to be a hundred. Together we watched death approaching from miles away. And every year our time together grew more precious, as the powers of body and mind slowly left her. 

A good friend, who was my age -- we didn’t see death coming at all. He was in the very midst of life, with a calendar filled with plans for the future. He was a man full of energy and enthusiasm, and amazing creative gifts still unfolding – when his heart suddenly stopped, with little warning at all. 

In one instance sorrow is quiet ache and somber understanding. In another instance grief is sharp pain and shocked disbelief.

* * *

Loss is an inescapable fact of life. And if we love, our losses will invariably be painful. The intensity of our pain is in direct proportion to the depth of our love. 

There is nothing more natural than grief. We must grieve. But we cannot remain in the place of sadness. The soul longs to move on. The soul knows that the experience of love lost will lead us into sorrow. But beneath the reservoir of sorrow there is more love, deeper love, and another life to be lived. 

When we are able to make peace with our sense of hurt, we will find healing, and our hearts will awaken to new life.

* * *

Death does not need to be the enemy of life. The reality of death can help us savor the deepest realities of life. 

What would it be like if we woke up one day, and knew this was the last day of our life? What if we knew we had only a few more hours left to bring our life to completion? What if we lived this day as if it were our last? 

I think we might be profoundly grateful for every moment. We might be grateful for every breath we take. We might be deeply grateful for the food on our plate. We might savor a glimpse of sunshine, and the scent of cool autumn air. We might be most grateful for the memories of love we have known, and the knowledge that we have the capacity to love more. 

Every day we receive a fresh start. Every day we are offered an opportunity for awakening. Every day we can be reborn. 

Grateful for the blessings of love we have received

Grateful for the gifts of love we have yet to give

May we cherish every moment this day,

And in our every action prove

That love will endure.

Amen.