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From Struggle to Hope
July 3, 2005

Good morning!  And happy 4th of July weekend!

One of my favorite movies is Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye…If you don’t remember it, Crosby and Kaye run an old inn in Vermont that is only open on holiday weekends.  Each holiday they perform a particular musical extravaganza themed to the particular holiday.  When Linda called and asked me to lead worship today, I told her I was beginning to feel like the Holiday Inn preacher!  This year, I’ve had the privilege of preaching in this community on Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, and I preached in New Zealand on Easter.  Next year, I’m scheduled to preach Valentine’s Day! 

And there is a tendency for ministers on holidays to feel that they need to preach a holiday themed sermon.  And indeed, Independence Day could almost be claimed as a Unitarian Universalist holiday!  Thomas Jefferson, who identified himself as a deist and Unitarian, wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence and submitted it to his compatriots’ review on June 28th.  They spent all day July 2nd reviewing and editing it, took July 3rd off, and formally adopted it on July 4th.  Reading it in preparation for today, I was struck by its prescient language.  We remember and hold almost sacred these words from the preamble: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

What you may not remember is that the Declaration is largely a condemnation of the King, listing more than a dozen grievances.  One condemns him this way, “He is at this time transporting large armies … to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.”  Hmmm…But, good news for some of you, I am going to resist the temptation to offer you a political sermon today.

July 4th is also another important date in Unitarian history – it is the day in 1845, when Henry David Thoreau left for his two years at Walden Pond.  Thoreau wrote in Walden that it was quite by accident that he left on Independence Day…his biographers believe he left on July 4th because it was the birthday of his brother, John, who had unexpectedly died a few years earlier from lockjaw and whose death he was still actively grieving.  Surely the opening words I read this morning reflect Thoreau’s deep understanding of both the sufferings and joys of life…like us, he knew that life can be both mean and sublime.

The first noble truth of Buddhism teaches us that life is suffering.  Who among us has not suffered? As a minister, I am aware of how often when I look out into the congregation I see people crying…perhaps because of something I’ve said that has touched them, but more often I suspect because of the pain and suffering that is going on in their own lives; when we come to this sacred, comforting place, sometimes the tears begin to flow freely.  There have been times in my 17 years here, where I have sat in these pews struggling with an issue in my life, and the hymn’s words, or a melody, or a reading touched my soul so that I flooded with grief.  I have vivid memories of one such morning: It was during my struggle with several board members towards the end of my time at SIECUS, we were singing the Rumi poem, “Come, come whoever you are…our’s is no caravan of despair.”  But mine felt like it was – and I cried for most of the service.

How many times have we all of experienced the little deaths that must be endured before our life moves on?    Relationship loss --- heart break -- job loss -- addictions…financial loss…debilitating illnesses, of ourselves or our loved ones, deaths of those we love…Some of you may remember Jane Bickford, a woman who served this church in so many ways for so many years before her premature death; she used to  counsel, “Dread one day at a time.” The great stories of our Jewish and Christian scripture speak to that universal suffering and need for hope.  The Exodus tells the story of the tribe wandering, lost, hungry, questioning in the desert for forty years, never knowing if they will reach the Promised Land; the gospels speak to us of crucifixion and resurrection. I am sure that all of us have had those days in the desert, feeling abandoned with no end in sight, or that moment on the cross, when we have felt all but forsaken, alone, despairing that life will never get better…some of you may feel that way right now.

Perhaps the hardest moments in life are those when we realize there is nothing we can do to change the struggle we face.  The diagnosis is correct.  The other person tells you he or she wants the marriage, the relationship to end.  The boss tells you that you no longer have a job.  “You’re fired” is not a clever Donald Trump slogan; it is a moment when people’s world’s change irrevocably.  We are powerless to change the outcome; what we have now is all that we have and it is not what we want. 

And sometimes our pain is collective, not just individual.  In our 24 hour news channel televised and internet world, we are witnesses to the suffering in the world in a way unimaginable just a decade ago …the human caused tragedies of 9/11, Madrid, Bali…the natural tragedies of the tsunami, tornados…the horrors today of war, torture, and genocide in Darfur, the Sudan, Iraq, Guitanamo, and so on.  Our Universalist tradition teaches us that we are all part of an interdependent existence.  In the face of such overwhelming sadness and tragedy, people ask where is God? Or plead with God, “Why have you forsaken us?”

And yet, we go on.  It is in the times of deepest struggle, of deepest pain, of asking why me? of feeling that life is just too painful, that we have a choice to make…we can be overwhelmed by our grief and our pain and our distress, or we can choose to be resilient and be born again.  Sister Joan Chittister in our wonderful book, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope, writes, “The spiritual question becomes how to go about each dying without giving into the death of the soul…“The greatest secret of life is how to survive struggle without succumbing to it, how to bear struggle without being defeated by it, how to come out of great struggle better than when we found ourselves in the midst of it.”

We have all probably known people who give up, never coming back after the death of a child or a spouse, a financial crisis, a crushing illness…and we all know people who go on, finding the support and strength to begin a new…Deuteronomy counsels us, “choose life, if you would live.”  The words to an old song come close, “pick yourself up, brush your self off, start all over again”.

But sometimes, it is not that easy.  Many of us, many more of us than we know, suffer from depression, anxiety disorders, and substance disorders, often exacerbated or brought on by the suffering in life.  A recent study by the National Institutes of Mental Health found that 55% of Americans will suffer from a mental disorder during their life time; that means more than half of us in this room, and almost every family has been touched by mental illness.  More than a quarter of those interviewed for this study had suffered from extended sadness, alcohol or drug use, anxiety, or impulse control disorders in the past year.  I screamed at the television in frustration this past week as I listened to Tom Cruise pontificate on that there were no need for psychiatric drugs or psychiatry or counseling for depression, knowing that as a celebrity, he could influence people to stop seeking help or worse, stop taking their very needed medications.  Any of us in this room who have been helped by or have watched a family member or friend being helped when the right medication is found for depression, anxiety disorder, mania, attention deficit, OCD and so on, know just how wrong he is.  The National Institutes of Mental Health study found that only one third of people seek appropriate treatment for their mental disorder; we don’t need a celebrity telling us not to do so.

But we also know that it is never just medication that relieves our suffering.  You may remember the research that was published in 1978 that compared the happiness levels of lottery winners and spinal cord victims.  Initially, both the lottery winner’s great fortune and the despair of the newly injured people affected hem profoundly.  But after a year had passed, the lottery winners who were unhappy before they won returned to being unhappy and the people who were happy before their spinal cord injuries were basically happy again despite their physical limitations.  Christopher Reeve, who we were privileged to worship with, exemplified that ability to engage the struggle.  In his book, “Nothing Is Impossible”, he wrote, “For able bodied people, paralysis is a choice, a choice to live with self doubt and a fear of taking risks.”  It was not a choice he was willing to make.  The world mourned Christopher Reeve not because he was a movie star but because he modeled how to live despite the struggles.

It partially has to do with how resilient you are.  They used to think that resiliency was an inborn trait, one either was born with it or not.  But, research now indicates that parents can teach their children to be resilient, and that it’s never too late for any of us to develop the confidence and personal strength that life demands.  According to research, resiliency demands that we have insight, creativity, a sense of humor, independence, initiative, and close relationships – and that we reach out to help others. 

These messages are very personal to me in my journey…how to have the courage to face the little deaths to achieve rebirth, to truly be born again.  Like many of you, I have faced job disappointments, heartbreak, serious illnesses of the people closest to me…each time, I have felt that I might never feel happy  again, that my life in that moment was too painful, that even living one day at a time was too hard, that living one minute at a time to the next was all I could manage…and yet, through family and friends and my faith and this church community, and meditation and exercise and massage, and yes, through the mere passage of time, I got through it. 

We get through it.  Bill Sinkford, the President of the UUA in an address last week before the General Assembly, said, “life is for all of us an act of faith.”  Life is for all of us an act of faith.  And never more than in those times of struggle.  It helps if we can remember that we have gotten through these times before, that life has been good to us before.  Joan Chittister writes, “Hope lies in the memory of God’s previous goodness to us in a world that is both bountiful and harsh.”

Hope is a choice.  The issue is not whether we accept the struggle, we most often have no choice but to accept it, but whether we give in to it or face it with courage.  That’s why the story of the Bosnian cellist resonates so strongly with us.  Vedran Smailovic did the only thing he knew how to do in the face of destruction…to play his cello.  When he was asked by a CNN reporter if he was not crazy for playing his cello while Sarajevo was being shelled, Smailovic replied, “You ask me am I crazy for playing the cello, why do you not ask if they are not crazy for shelling Sarajevo?” 

Some times we just need to start with a tiny act of courage.  Getting out of bed.  Getting dressed and going out.  Reading the want ads or going to look at Match.com.  Coming to church.

We get through it by being together.  Dorothy Bass wrote, “The reason mountain climbers are tied together is to keep the sane ones from going home.”  The same is true for life…we are tied together…and in our church, we seek to share those dark times, our pain and our brokenness and to find the hope to believe that things will get better again...to ask for or to provide a listening ear or even better a listening heart. 

During a time when one of my family members was very ill, I asked my friends to stop asking me, “How are you” or to stop saying, “have a nice day.”  I was terrible and my day was going to be awful.  I didn’t want anyone to wish me a nice day.  Instead, I asked my close friends to ask, “Is there anything I can do to make your life a bit easier today?”  And then I had to learn to answer them concretely and accept the help that was being offered, something that is difficult for many of us.  It’s easier to say, “Oh, no, it’s under control” even when it’s not.  I learned from my time as a chaplain in the hospital that people really do want to help.  I had a patient named Kim who was very sick with cancer; she was a young mother, who had been in the hospital for several weeks.  She was worried about how her husband and child were eating, about her plants that she was sure her husband was ignoring, about the piles of laundry that she knew weren’t getting done.  Her best friend came to see her and asked if there was anything she could do.  Kim said no.  Her friend burst into tears, saying, “I feel so helpless to help you.  I wish I could do something.”  I gently suggested to Kim that perhaps her friend could water the plants and do the laundry.  People really do want to help us in times of struggle; we need to be able to let them.

We need each other as we seek the meaning in the struggle.  Not in the platitudes of “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle” or glib, “You’ll get through this, you always do.”  After my miscarriage many years ago, many people who said “don’t worry.  You’ll have another baby.”  I’d mutter “thank you” when I wanted to scream at them, “don’t you understand that I’m grieving the loss of this very particular pregnancy?”  There is something pernicious in the statement “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle”…what kind of God gives us cancer or sick children or broken hearts because we can handle it?!  Instead, I like to think it is God - or if you prefer the beneficence of the universe – that gives us the strength to handle what we’ve got. 

Often we can’t see the meaning in a time of struggle, and some traumas have no meaning to offer.  Surely, in cases of rape, murder, premature death, it will never make sense.  Last week at GA, we heard from a mother and a father the story of their schizophrenic son who had killed five people, spent 17 years on death row, and then was executed by the state of Texas.  It was heartbreaking and incomprehensible.  But, in lesser struggles, we can hope that we will find the gift of insight or growth; during my own times of struggle, I try to remember these words, “perhaps all the dragons are really princesses waiting to see you bold and beautiful.”      

We know that there can be a gift in the struggles.  That struggle calls us to a new beginning, a new way of being in the world, a time to ask what is waiting to happen in my life right now.  After a major struggle in our lives, we become in Sister Joan’s words, “a new person, sometimes worse, often better, always different.  We know things that we never knew before.”  Dorothy Thompson wrote, “courage is…continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good, that everything is meaningful even if it is a sense beyond our understanding, and that there is always tomorrow.” 

For sure, our memories of those times of struggle call us to really appreciate the times when life is good…an old friend asked me the other day if I was happy …and I told him that I was, for now, that at this moment, everyone I  love most is healthy and happy and gainfully employed… And that I try to remember each day to be grateful for this time, because I know it will not always be.   

Fredrick Buechner, one of my favorite theologian writers, tells the story of going to the doctor thinking he has lung cancer and finding out that he has the flu.  He writes, "To have the doctor tell you that it is not lung cancer after all but just a touch of the flu is in a way to be born again.  For…it is to be given back not just your old life again but your old life with a new sense of its pricelessness.  At least for a time, old grievances, disappointments, irritations, failures, that had cast a shadow over your days suddenly cease to matter much.  You are alive.  That’s all that matters, and the sheer wonder and grace of it are staggering, the sense of life as gift, and the sense of the pricelessness of each moment too, even the most humdrum.  The taste of fresh bread.  The trip to pick up the laundry.  The walk with a friend.  They were nearly taken away for good.  Someday they will be taken away for good indeed.  But in the meantime, they are yours.  Treasure them for what they will not be forever.  Treasure them for what, except by God’s grace, they might never have been at all.” 

One of my favorite parables is the story of the monk and the crystal glass.  The people of the town came to the wise old monk (the monks in these stories are always wise and old), and asked him how could he be happy in the midst of all the suffering, of the certain knowledge that every one would die, that bad days were sure to come.  The monk held up a beautiful glass on his desk.  “You see this glass? It was given to me by a special friend.  I love this glass.  But, I know that one day the wind may blow and knock it over, or someone may accidentally knock it off my desk.  I know that the glass is already broken, and so I choose to enjoy it immensely.”

The glass is already broken.  Choose to treasure it.  Choose to enjoy it immensely.

CLOSING WORDS

Resurrection. The reversal of what was thought to be absolute.  The turning of midnight into dawn, hatred into love, dying into living anew.

If we look more closely into life, we will find that resurrection is more than hope, it is our experience.  The return to life from death is something we understand at our innermost depths, something we feel on the surface of our tender skin.  We have come back from life, not only when we start to shake off a shroud of sorrow that has bound us, but when we begin to believe in all that is still, endlessly possible.

We give thanks for all those times we have arisen from the depths or simply taken a tiny step toward something new.  May we be empowered by extraordinary second chances.  And as we enter the world anew, let us turn the tides of despair into endless waves of hope.”                                             

-Molly Fumia

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