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Your One Precious Life
November 29, 2009

Opening Words:

Good morning. Welcome and Happy Thanksgiving weekend! As Unitarian Universalists, I think we might adopt Thanksgiving as our own religious holiday! It seems to have all the important elements: time for connection and reconnections, time for service, time for reflection and rest, and time to be grateful, to offer what Meister Eckhart says is the only prayer we ever need, “thank you.” I am thankful to be here today, to Frank for sharing his pulpit, to you for continuing to support my ministry.

How many of you are here visiting family? Returning from school for the weekend? 

Hope you have had a lovely weekend of reconnections…we are glad you are here. 

The Summer Day, Mary Oliver

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Sermon: Your One Precious Life

Good morning. It’s been a long weekend. Thanksgiving. Friday shopping. Chowdafest. The wonderful memorial service last night for our dear friend Jerry Davidoff. Some of you have spent a lot of it here. I’m glad you came back.

In Christian churches, today is the first Sunday of Advent. For those of you, like me, who didn’t grow up in a Christian tradition, Advent is the four weeks leading up to the birth of Jesus. It is understood as a time of anticipation, preparation and of waiting for the coming of the Messiah. Advent is not mentioned in the Bible or in the early church – of course, neither is the date of Jesus’ birth. Indeed, you may remember that it wasn’t until the mid 300’s that Constantine declared Jesus’ birthday as a national holiday, and some time later, that Julius, Bishop of Rome, decided that it was December 25th. Somehow the modern church has forgotten that someone arbitrarily made up the day for Jesus’ birthday.

Advent probably began in the next century, and for centuries, it was a time not of shopping and decorating and overeating, but instead of fasting and self-reflection, similar to the way Ramadan is celebrated today. Our Christian neighbors will be reminded this morning in the required lectionary readings not about the conception of Jesus, but about his return and the end of time as we know it. In the Mark reading for today,  the community is asked to look for signs of Jesus’ return, just as they look to the budding of the fruit tree to know that summer is near. But, the text goes on to say, since no one knows when the Messiah will return, people must be ever vigilant. It’s an ominous passage, but I like the way it ends. The writer says, I think echoing Jesus’ own call, “And what I say to you I say to all.  Keep awake.”

“Keep awake. That’s a message that would be helpful as we enter this very busy next four weeks. In fact, many of the questions raised by Advent seem to me to be central religious questions.  “What is waiting to happen in my life next? What are the signs that joy is coming? Am I prepared for the birth of something new? Am I living my life so I will be prepared for the ending of the time I have known?”

Rev. Forrest Church in what he called his “last sermon” said that “Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die. We are not the animal with advanced language or tools as much as we are the religious animal. Knowing that we must die, we question what life means. The answers we arrive at may not be religious answers, but the questions death forces us to ask are, at heart, religious questions: Where did I come from? Who am I? Where am I going? What is life’s purpose? What does this all signify? Death is not life’s goal, only life’s terminus. The goal is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for.”

Or as poet Mary Oliver asked in the opening words I shared,

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

I’ve been thinking about these questions a lot lately. This summer, I had a mini midlife crisis. I passed a significant birthday in August, and even though I still find it hard to say aloud, at 55, I can no longer pretend that I am not middle aged or that my life isn’t finite. Both of my parents had health emergencies this summer, landing them in emergency rooms. I of course know that people in their 70’s and 80’s and 90’s begin to experience greater health and mobility issues, but my parents’  unexpected illnesses brought my own mortality it into sharp relief. I was 55 and I could no longer pretend that I would be young forever or that my life wasn’t finite. I had several weeks where I couldn’t stop thinking that life was short, that I have only 20, 30, at the outside 40 more years of active productivity, and that of course, it could be much less than that. To quote Forrest again, I realized in yet a new way, that life “is an undeserved, unexpected gift, holy, awesome and mysterious.  That it will one day be taken away, even as it was given to us, is one of the conditions placed upon this gift.”

And that it was once again time to as Mark counseled, “keep awake.” To recognize that I was indeed going through “the change”, in a much more profound way than the euphemism from my grandmother’s time. That the distress and dis-ease I was feeling was inviting me to go back to questions that I thought I had resolved for good when I had moved from my career in sexology to ministry. One of the surprises of midlife is that we finally understand that nothing is ever resolved for good -- that it is always, in Rilke’s words, about living the questions. 

And so I looked to my friends and mentors who are older for help. I spent several sessions with my wonderful spiritual director, Joy Carol, a woman in her early 70’s, who like me, went from a career in the nonprofit field to r ministry in her late forties. She once did a research study in a hospice, and asked the patients, “If you could do it again, what would you do differently?” She told me that no one talked about wanting greater fame, or wealth, or things. All wanted connection with people and life and a sense of purpose. She told me about an older Chinese American man who told her that without a sense of connection, there would boredom, and that the Chinese characters for boredom are the words “killing heart.”  She told me that one of her greatest learnings in her fifties and sixties was to not waste her precious time with people or activities that did not feed her. She asked me to think about what were the activities, experiences, people that fed my soul. 

 I thought about the concept of “re-firement” that I had learned from my friend and colleague Dr. Karen Hein. At the age of 60 left her very good job as the President of a Foundation, not to “retire” but as she put it to “re-fire.” Karen was previously the Executive Director of the National Academy of Sciences and every day, on the way to work, she passed the sculpture of Gandhi which includes his well known quotation, on the mall in Washington, D.C. She told me, “one day, I just got it. “Be the change you want to see in the world” for me meant leaving the professional academic and then philanthropy world, and creating my life in a new way.” She and her husband moved full time to Vermont, and spend several months each year, traveling the world providing medical care when there are health emergencies. They’ve been to Mongolia, to Africa, to the area hit by the tsunami.

I think that re-fire-ment isn’t just for middle age people, but is a challenge for all of us. Jason Shelton’s wonderful anthem is about that fire within: the fire of commitment [that] sets our mind and soul ablaze…so that we live with deep assurance of the flame that burns within.” The promise as Jason has written it is that when we discover that fire, “our promise finds fulfillment and our future can begin.

Fire is a holy image. In earth centered religions, it is one of the four elements. Fire provides warmth, light, and protection; but as people have always known, it can also unchecked cause great devastation. In the Bible, it is both a symbol of destruction and a metaphor of God’s holiness. God appears first to Abraham as a flaming torch, and then to Moses as a burning bush that although “aflame…was not consumed.” God leads the Israelites out of Egypt as a “pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night.” 

Candles and fire play a central role in worship in most religions. The flame represents insight, wisdom, memories, and holiness. Every Jewish synagogue has an “eternal light” that stays lit, reflecting the perpetual fire that burned in the most holy part of the sanctuary in the First and Second Temples. The UU chalice is part of that tradition. When we created the logo for the Religious Institute, the organization I co-founded and now direct, we chose the three candles you see on the altar cloth here to represent the light we hoped to bring to the world and our multifaith traditions.

The image of the fire deep within reminds me of a story that William Bridges tells in his wonderful little book, “Transitions”, about a long ago radio announcer named Bob Burns who served in the army during World War ll. He apparently had spent his first 18 years eating his mother’s very fatty, very fried cooking. After two weeks in the army of GI rations, something was dramatically missing and he knew something was terribly wrong. The heartburn he had experienced all his life was missing! Burns said he ran to the doctor, “Doc, doc, help me. My fire has gone out!”

We’ve all been there, times when the fire has gone out, when we feel that the light within us is extinguished forever. I remember a time many years ago when after a crisis befell our family saying to my therapist, “I have lost the ability to feel happiness.  I don’t think I will ever feel happy again.” The spark was gone. She reassured me that it would come back, but at that moment, it didn’t feel that way. Some times we need other people to help us rekindle, as Albert Schweitzer wrote, the spark within us. 

There is a midrash about Adams first day on earth. If you remember the story from Genesis 1, God creates Adam on the 6^th day, and then God rests on the seventh. But the text is silent about what happens later on the sixth day to Adam or what God did next.  Midrash were used by the Rabbis in the middle ages to fill in the missing parts of the story. The Rabbis wonder what Adam did after he was created, and imagine what he must have thought as the sun begins to set. The world is going dark. It is getting cold. He has no idea where he is, and no idea if the light will return. He must be terrified. And so the Rabbis imagine God giving Adam two flint stones and teaching Adam to make fire. My friend Rabbi Sandy Sasso says this about that story:

My fourteen year call to ministry was about finding and nourishing the flame, having others help kindle the flame, but also about moments of pure despair and terror, when I felt like I was alone in the center of a consuming fire. 

I know some of you have heard me tell the story of my call to ministry, but I also know that I have previously only told part of it. My call happened here, 22 years ago, speaking from this place.  In 1988, I was the leader for a summer service. As I was speaking in a church for the very first time, I felt – felt not heard – a voice deep within me. It said, “You are supposed to do this.”  I was stunned; nothing like this had ever happened to me. There was nothing in my theology or religious background that allowed for feeling voices. I said to myself, “Go away, I’m in the middle of a talk”…and went back to my text. I felt again “You are supposed to do this.” I continued with my prepared talk, a little shaken but convinced that it was my imagination. My colleague Lorna Sarrel, hearing me tell this story, said it was truly “call waiting.” 

Thus, began a decade of resisting my call to ministry. I forgot about the voice and went back to my work. A few years later, when two of my closest friends chose to go to divinity school, including our own Barbara Fast, I felt an unimaginable sense of jealousy…and I ignored it. When I felt the voice again one day sitting in church, I ignored it. I was doing everything I could to not pay attention to the signs. 

I finally listened enough in 1995 to spend a semester of a sabbatical at the Yale Divinity School…where I decided quite happily at the end that what I had needed was a semester learning more about the Bible for my work as a sexologist, and that I certainly didn’t need to stay in seminary and become a minister. You know that line, “God laughs when we are making other plans.”

Within the next year, my call to ministry became stronger…and more difficult to ignore. In 1997, Rosella Fanelli, led my women’s group in a discussion, “What is your bliss, and are you following it now?” My answer was immediate and strong, “If I was following my bliss, I’d be in seminary.” It was the spark I needed. I enrolled part time that fall.  I was terrified the night before orientation began, “what if I had made a terrible mistake?” Rosella again was there, “if you hate it, you can always quit at the end of the first semester.”

I loved it. And my call to ministry became stronger.   

The hardest part though was giving up my position as the President of SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, a small national not-for-profit that promotes comprehensive sexuality education…a job I had held for more than a decade. I had a great job, I was doing important work, I was paid well, and I had the chance to tell America what I thought about everything from Bill Clinton to gays in the military…

Except for one thing – it was no longer feeding my heart or my soul. Indeed, by 1998, I was no longer as excited by my work --  my relationship with about a quarter of the Board was seriously compromised as I began working on religion issues – after all, SIECUS was a secular agency. I had enrolled at Union Theological seminary very part time and I couldn’t see any way that I would ever be able to take either the 3 day a week core courses or complete the strenuous UU requirements for ministry. I wasn’t doing my job with the love I had felt earlier and I didn’t have time or energy to engage seminary in the way I wanted. But I couldn’t see leaving this very good job either.

And then in 1999, I made the decision to oppose the nominating committee’s selection for the next chair of the Board of Trustees, despite more experienced Executive Director colleagues warning me about what was likely to happen. The Board agreed not to elect a Chair I didn’t want, but then let me know in more ways than I have time to recount, that they were in charge and I had used up all my capital. My relationship with a few more of the board members deteriorated, and two in particular were very vocal that it was time for me to go. It was an incredibly painful and dark time. I was in the middle of that fire and it threatened to destroy me. 

Looking back, I now understand that things had to get that bad for me to decide to leave and pursue ministry. If they hadn’t, I might still be there today. I actually stayed on for SIECUS for nearly two more years after that conflict…two years that were marked by increasing struggle with my board of directors and my own sense that I was being called to a different mission in the world…Finally, in the words of Anais Nin, “the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful that the risk it took to blossom.” I submitted my resignation, feeling that I was stepping off a high ledge without a net. 

I gave the Board ten months notice. In retrospect, I wish I had given them three. No one should be a lame duck that long. That last year after my resignation was even more difficult than the previous one. I was afraid… afraid of leaving behind the status of being an  Executive Director, afraid of what it would mean in my 40s to be a full time student; afraid to give up a steady pay check; afraid because like Adam on the sixth day, I couldn’t see where any of this was headed. I was pretty sure I’d never have as interesting a job again. I just knew I was dying inside, and I no longer had a choice but to finally listen to the voice within me. I carried around this quote in my day timer that year, “sometimes the dragons are really princesses waiting for you to be bold and beautiful.” I hoped it was true.

It was time to re-fire.

It’s been ten years, and I am grateful every day, for making the decision to become a minister. I smile when I think how sure I was a decade ago that nothing very interesting would ever happen in my work life again.

And I understand now, in a way that I didn’t then, that re-firing isn’t just about careers and work, but about connection and meaning. My mini-midlife crisis late this summer isn’t about changing career direction or jobs (at least I don’t think it is), but about what else there is left for me to do. I took out my now ten year old copy of “Transitions” this week, and resonated again to Bridge’s question, “what would be left undone if your life ended today?” I remembered questions that I had struggled with a decade ago.  Pablo Neruda asking, “Whom can I ask what I came to make happen in this world? ” Dawna Markova, in her wonderful little book, asking questions that I return to again and again when I am struggling about an important life decision, “What is it too soon for, what is it too late for, what is it just the right time for?”

What will we do with our one and wild and precious life?

You may have seen or at least heard of the Morgan Freeman movie, “The Bucket List.” Fifteen years ago, my women’s group decided to create a list of 25 things we wanted to do before we die. During the past fifteen years, I’ve done about two thirds of them…At 40, I wanted another child, to write a book, to visit the Galapagos, to buy a convertible, to take some seminary classes.

At my prompting, we’ve decided to repeat the assignment. Tomorrow night, we’re to come in with a new list. We’re now in our mid to late fifties, and I think all of us feel life as more finite than it did in our early to mid 40’s. I’m still working on my new list, but some have come to me strongly and quickly. I’m clear that I want to do more academic work – and I have promised myself to start investigating doctorate of ministry programs, which is a degree that can be done part time. I know that there is a book on sexuality and religion in the United States inside me that must be written. I know that I want to find a way to live overseas, if not just for a sabbatical. I know that each year I want to do some new travel that stretches me, and I want to be sure that each year; I spend quality time with the people I love who live in other places. I want to live with integrity. By telling YOU about these goals, I’m hoping it will hold me accountable. 

And I realize perhaps in a way I did not fifteen years ago, that there are things on my list that I don’t control: I hope to be a grandparent. I want to be physically and mentally healthy for the rest of my life. Did I mention that I’d like to die in my sleep in my mid 90s?

The challenge to us all, regardless of our age or time of life, is to “re-fire.” To find the flame deep within, and to bring it forth into the world. To make real the words I put on my ordination order of service that guide me every day, Rabbi Nachman’s prayer, “to use my life to the fullest, to become the person I am meant to be.”

Which brings me back to this season of Advent. Make a promise to yourself to live intentionally during these next four weeks. To let go of the activities on your to do list that don’t feed your soul, and to do the ones that do. If you don’t like writing holiday cards or baking hundreds of cookies, don’t, even if that’s what you’ve always done. Decide if you love seeing “The Nutcracker” or if this is the year, you’ll finally stop going. Watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “White Christmas” with your family because you can’t wait to see them again, or take the afternoon to read a book.  If you enjoy the mall, go. If you don’t, shop online or don’t shop at all.  Eat the wonderful foods that you enjoy, but skip the fruitcake and the eggnog if you don’t.  Each of us only has a finite number of December seasons left. 

And take the time to think about the bigger questions of Advent. 

What is waiting to happen in my life next? What are the signs that joy is coming? What is waiting to be born within me? 

Tell me, tell all of us, what do I want to do with my one wild and precious life? 

Blessings for this holiday season.

Closing Words: I will not die an unlived life by Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

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