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Just as the winged energy of delight
carried you over many chasms early on,
now raise the daringly imagined arch
holding up the astounding bridges.
Miracle doesn’t lie only in the amazing
living through and defeat of danger;
miracles become miracles in the clear
achievement that is earned.
To work with things is not hubris
when building the association beyond words;
denser and denser the pattern becomes––
being carried along is not enough.
Take your well-disciplined strengths
and stretch them between two
opposing poles. Because inside human beings
is where God lives.
Sermon:
“Just as the winged energy of delight
carried you over many chasms early on,
now raise the daringly imagined arches
holding up the astonishing bridges:
The soaring imagery of Rilke’s poem might strike some of us as fanciful and unrealistic. I would ask you to begin with me remembering what it was like to play as a child. Imagination was and always will be our very best friend. It was mine. My younger brother didn’t arrive into our house until I was seven and so for the first years of my life, and many more beyond that, I kept company with an imaginary friend. I called him Rocco. I don’t know why I called him Rocco, except perhaps I knew such a friend in a previous life or I lived in a town inhabited by Italian and Irish immigrants who came to build the Hudson River rail line. But Rocco was, and occasionally still is, my confidant and the wings of my delight. I speak to him out load occasionally still to this day. And in those early years we imagined ourselves building cities, saving families and soaring on imaginary wings over the chasms of reality that all too often weigh us down; certainly by the time we become adults. In many ways my entire ministry has been about re-awakening in you, my people, those early winged energy of delights in simply living and being together that take us over the drab chasms of bills, children, parents, jobs and relationships. The classes I teach, the worship we enjoy, the actions we are called to do, the company we enjoy are the wings that help us soar to deeper understanding over the chasms of barren reason and a world in such pain. Together we build a bridge, across the range of our lives and our feelings, each side balanced by the other.
And lest you think that this is just not the reasonable faith of Unitarian Universalism, let me remind you that Emily Dickenson, Buckminster Fuller and Kurt Vonnegut were all UUs. Count among us, here alone, poets and dancers and musicians and cooks and caretakers and story tellers along with engineers, and teachers and creators. Our faith, indeed this church has been holding up the most astonishing bridges. While we might lose sight of how good we are at meaning making by what troubles us, I only ask that you look deeper; each of you is an original blessing of creation. And we are not alone; indeed we ride in the wake of an emergent movement of spiritual renewal. We can’t see it but it is very much alive within us now. Change is all around us, despite the fact as George Carlin said if you put a dollar in a change machine nothing really changes but the money.
Rilke wrote: “Miracle doesn’t lie only in the amazing
living through and defeat of danger;
miracles become miracles in the clear
achievement that is earned.”
Unitarian Universalism is transforming right around us. Less concerned with how we are different from other religions, more concerned about how much we are the same. Wouldn’t it be something if we all stopped beating the drums of war for our side and actually reached across the chasm to the other, and found out that we all feel pain, we all worry, we all need love? As Rumi said: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Wouldn’t it be something if we were the church that was known for reaching out across the divide and not digging into our bunkers of certainty? Can you hear me?
Thirty years ago as a young father, when Francis and I returned to this faith with our infant daughters, we joined a Fellowship, a lay led group that prided itself on a do-it-yourself approach to religion. We rolled up our sleeves and went to work. Cooking, cleaning, teaching and leading worship. It was in that little church that I first heard the call to ministry. But while the chores haven’t changed, the way we do our religion has. The bold reality of it is that my generation and younger doesn’t have as much time as previous generation to do the work of the church. And yet our religion keeps reinventing itself. The way we raise money has changed. The time we have to volunteer has changed. But the power of this community, the love of those who have come before, these have not changed. The miracles don’t lie in our defeat of danger but in the clear achievement of what we have earned as we have learned to harness technology, computers, emails, social media and texting. We are keeping, believe it or not, most of our connections with all four generations of this church all at the same time; our wise elders, our newly retired, our families and our youth.
It’s not that one way is better than another; it’s that we are different and YET we still manage to stay connected. Somehow we have managed to balance comfort and challenge; just this last week I reached out to a young person who had lost someone dear to her to suicide through Facebook, I reached out to another who is facing cancer through several pages of texting on our phones, and yet another at his bedside as he lay dying. We are literally transforming in our faith, and what will work for all of us is to leave aside the judgment that one way is better than another and just embrace the theological pragmatism that any way we can touch one another makes our lives more meaningful. Touching each other is our theology and it is a miracle. We make meaning by creating community. And frankly I don’t give a dam how we do it as long as we do it. Our church will look very different in 10 more years but it will survive by celebrating the achievement of the miracle that comes from holding up the bridges which connect us. We had a great workshop with some of you yesterday looking at how much we have achieved in the last 15 years; Neighborhood Circles, SGM, fully integrating social media, a social justice director and a ministry to our varied communities, Addiction Recovery Ministry, a core of dedicated Chaplains, our Worship Associates, the Shawl Ministry, a Board moving to Policy Governance, professionalizing our business practices. The list goes on and on. Embracing change is our only salvation.
Rilke wrote: “To work with things is not hubris
when building the association beyond words;
denser and denser the pattern becomes––
being carried along is not enough.
Take your well-disciplined strengths
and stretch them between two
opposing poles. Because inside human beings
is where God lives
We will grow best I am convinced if we take seriously Rilke’s suggestion that we build associations beyond words until our patterns of being together are so dense we can stretch it between the poles of our generations. Last week during our new Family Ministry night as people connected to people, the well-disciplined strength of love and connection stretched across worlds. Just last week a group of us talked about how we could create a program that would meet the needs of our elders to feel the touch and connection of being together while providing a space for children to play and all of us to eat, worship and sing. At the end of the meeting, we all felt we had designed a program that would go beyond our words and stretch us between each other to allow the Holy to find expression and presence for those who so badly need love, which is all of us. Julio, our intern minister has been hard at work with our Youth strengthening the bonds which hold us up. As we were leaving when one of our older but not yet elder members who had been part of the meeting said to us: “Ahhhh, now I see what you are trying to do. You helping us grow spiritually even if we say we don’t want to.” This is the stretching, the natural tension that we are feeling. It’s not always comfortable, but I am convinced whether we do this together or individually we will see a deeper meaning to our lives appear. We will breakthrough to a new place very soon. We are not falling, we are transforming. Sometimes change just feels like falling. We will not do this alone. Nor will we do it only here but we will do it. Because whether its words or dance or music or touch or story or action or cooking or holding or just being, God, such as she is, is right here between us, is right here between the poles of our beings, if only we have the courage to hold up and be those astonishing bridges. I know we can do this. I just know it. Join me, my beloveds as we build this most astonishing bridge. Amen.