Opening Words from Albert Einstein:
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science… It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion.
“A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity.
“In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man. I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”
May this time together today help us to embrace the mystery; to accept the limits of our knowing without diminishing the sense of wonder and awe that can come to us at any moment…through music, art, poetry, literature, or silence…or through these windows that remind us that we are part of the natural world, immersed in the Eternal.
Reading: Ithaca, by Constantine Cavafy
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road’s a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon — do not fear them:
You won’t find them on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty and a fine
emotion touches your spirit.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you won’t encounter them,
unless you carry them within your soul.
Pray that the road is long.
May there be many a summer morning, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to discover new things and to learn from scholars.
Always keep (your home in) Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to finally arrive at the island when you are old,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca to make you rich.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, filled with so much experience,
you will finally understand what an Ithaca means.
Sermon: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
One of my Christmas presents was a CD recording of the Odyssey; I’ve been listening to in the car when I’m on the road; which is appropriate, since being ‘on the road’ is what Homer’s poem is all about – Odysseus’s ten-year journey home to Ithaca.
The epic poem, written presumably by the Greek poet, Homer, around 800 to 600 B.C., is filled with stories about the gods and monsters, it’s about the heroic adventure; but mostly it’s about the journey home – the journey we’re all on, right now – making our way home, toward inner peace, reconciliation, and authenticity.
Cavafy’s poem is a brief summary of Homer’s Odyssey, the journey of the soul; the trials and tribulations of the human spirit. The gods and monsters exist only in our own imaginations; Ithaca is the promised land, the land that Dorothy imagined in The Wizard of Oz, ‘somewhere over the rainbow.’
Ithaca was the geographic home of Odysseus, Kansas was Dorothy’s home, and the reason for the journey, with all the lessons to be learned along the way.
So Cavafy says ‘Don’t rush it; don’t rush past the markets and the fine merchandise, take your time; pause to enjoy the summer mornings, take time to smell the perfumes (and the coffee); fill your senses; enjoy the journey. This is it — this is your life. Live it, now.
Wherever you are along the journey, “always keep Ithaca in mind.”
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, filled with so much experience,
you will finally understand what an Ithaca means.
Ithaca, then, is a symbol of one’s spiritual center – the part of us that feels ‘at home’ in the world, at home in our selves, in our own skin.
Ithaca, like that place ‘over the rainbow,’ is the ideal.
The Wizard of Oz is the religious pilgrimage – marvelous mythology. That’s why it’s one of the most popular stories in our culture. It’s a retelling of the journey of Odysseus back to Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan war. It takes him ten more years to get back to his island.
Dorothy needed to find her way home. Poor Dorothy was an orphan, being raised by her Aunt and Uncle. We’re never told anything about Dorothy’s parents – only that she’s an orphan. Dorothy feels threatened by her nasty neighbor, Miss Gulch. But Dorothy walks by her house every day and Toto gets on to her property and chases her cat. Dorothy is either irresponsible, or perhaps purposely taunting Miss Gulch. Why would she do that? Sure enough, the nasty neighbor gets an edict to take Toto away from her.
Toto escapes and comes home to Dorothy; but Dorothy is afraid the wicked Miss Gulch will come back, so she decides to run away from home. She meets Professor Marvel who pretends to be able to read her mind – he reads the tell-tail signs of a run-a-way girl and her dog.
Professor Marvel consults his crystal ball and convinces Dorothy that her Aunt Em has fallen ill and needs her, so she races home.
But a tornado comes quickly and Dorothy and Toto are locked out of the shelter. They go into the house just before it is blown into the air and Dorothy is knocked unconscious. She has a most amazing dream that begins with a crash landing in Munchkin Land, killing the wicked Witch of the East, who was a tyrant ruler over the poor Munchkins; without realizing it, Dorothy liberates them from the tyrant.
She says, “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
The Good Witch of the North, Glinda, asks Dorothy if she is ‘a good witch or a bad witch.’ Dorothy responds that she’s not a witch at all – witches, she says are old and ugly. But Glinda is a beautiful witch who comes to Dorothy’s aid. Glinda takes the ruby slippers from the feet of the wicked Witch of the East and gives them to Dorothy, telling her never to take them off of her feet – obviously the ruby slippers hold some kind of magical power.
The wicked Witch of the West demands to have the slippers — she wants to have power over everyone in the Land of Oz. The Tao Te Ching says: “Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”
Dorothy doesn’t know why she needs the slippers — she certainly doesn’t want to have power over others — but she needs power to master herself; she needs the courage to find her way ‘back home’ again.
Dorothy is told to follow the yellow brick road, which is a symbol of the way forward. Go for it!
Along the road she meets the scarecrow, the tin man and the lion, each of whom needs something. The scarecrow has a head filled with straw so he needs brains; the tin man is hollow and needs a heart, and the lion is afraid of everyone and everything, and is in need of courage so he can be a real lion.
Most of the characters in her dream represent people from her home in Kansas. Dreams are about the inner life, so they’re filled with symbols of our outer life.
When Dorothy and her companions finally reach Emerald City they are razzle-dazzled by the Great Wizard, who no one has ever seen. Toto pulls the curtain aside to reveal the big imposter pulling the levers to make the showy display and Dorothy exclaims: “Oh, you’re a bad man!”
He says, “No, I’m a good man. I’m just a bad wizard.”
At my service of ordination, in 1972, my friend and colleague Dave Weissbard, offered the ‘charge to the congregation,’ quoting the Wizard’s line, above, and he said, “Remember, Frank is a good man, but he’s a bad wizard! He doesn’t have a crystal ball, so you have to tell him things. You have to let him know if you want a visit, or if you’re going into the hospital, or if you’re upset with a sermon, or if you disagree with something important that you heard him say. He’ll be there. He won’t be able to wave a magic wand and make things all better for you, but he’ll be there for you.”
After the Wizard acknowledges his wizardly limitations, he nonetheless promises to help Dorothy find her way back to Kansas, and to help the others find what they came for: brains, compassion and courage; things we all need.
He gives them an assignment: “Get the Wicked Witch of the West; bring me her broom.”
They accept the assignment, a task that provides a perfect opportunity to discover the things they need: brains, heart-compassion and courage.
Dorothy comes to the aid of the scarecrow who was on fire, throwing water on him and accidentally douses the Wicked Witch who melts.
It’s a wonderful illustration of unintended consequences. Dorothy is shocked and says, “I didn’t mean to kill her, it’s just that he was on fire!”
In the course of their effort to ‘get the Wicked Witch of the West’ the lion discovers the courage he doubted, the scarecrow finds that he has the brains he needs and the Tin Man realizes his compassion, which fills the hollow place in him.
Dorothy still has to find her way back to Kansas, and the Wizard, who has been revealed, offers to give her a ride in his balloon; but the balloon takes off without her.
Glinda, her guardian angel, points out to Dorothy that she just has to click the heals of those special ruby slippers she’s wearing, repeat the mantra, “There’s no place like home,” and she’ll find herself back in Kansas.
She follows the instructions, clicks her heals and repeats the mantra, and sure enough, she wakes up in Kansas and her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, and the farm hands are all there to greet her. She tries to tell them about her experience but they dismiss it as ‘only a dream.’
The Unitarian interpretation of this captivating story is that we have to travel ‘the yellow brick road’ of life for ourselves, but we don’t have to travel by ourselves. We need one another. It helps to have traveling companions. The task for each of us, and for all of us, is to ‘get the wicked Witch of the West,’ who represents our fear – to face our fears and, as the Chinese story says, ‘to shake hands with the dragon.’ Thoreau said, “We have nothing to fear but fear.”
The God you once believed in may turn out to be a projection thrown up on a screen by a well-meaning, good-natured wizard, so you may be tempted to throw that baby out with the bathwater. But look again at all the old stories and you may be surprised at what you find there – things you didn’t notice before.
Some suggest that the Wizard of Oz has been overly interpreted; a brief browse on the internet provides a sampling. There’s a book-length Jewish interpretation called, “Schlepping Over the Rainbow.”
There are lots of sermons to show that it’s a retelling of the Christian story. One, for example, says, “Dorothy was innocent and compassionate. When acting out of compassion, she conquered all wickedness…Dorothy’s innocence is a portrayal of the innocence of the saint, or believer in Christ.”
I have a Zen Buddhist interpretation in a book called, “The Zen of Oz.” Joey Green shows how the story fits into the Zen paradigm, how Dorothy attained satori, or enlightenment.
No religion would have to stretch very far to show how the story of Dorothy’s journey with her companions — her apostles — fits.
There are also political interpretations. One historian suggests that it’s “…a parable of the Populist movement of the 1890s: Dorothy represents the American people, the Scarecrow symbolizes farmers, the Tin Woodman stands in for factory workers, and the Cowardly Lion is William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate.
One of the leading concerns of Bryan and the Populists was to get off the gold standard (the Yellow Brick Road) and replace it with the silver standard (the color of Dorothy’s slippers in the book).”
Dorothy was asked by Glinda whether she was a good witch or a bad witch, introducing the idea of good and evil; the first suggestion to Dorothy that she might be capable evil, even if unconsciously.
She did have a fear and hatred of Miss Gulch, and to some extent she brought that on, taunting Miss Gulch by bringing her dog Toto by to chase Miss Gulch’s cat in her own yard, certainly a violation.
Perhaps she was angry at her own life; she was orphaned. We never learn anything about her parents’ demise, only that she has no parents.
At the culmination of her work to ‘get the wicked witch’s broomstick’ the evil melts away, as if by magic; and it was unintended: “I didn’t mean to kill her,” she says, “but he was on fire!”
Here at the Unitarian Church we’re trying to create a sense of purposeful companionship where we can ‘follow the yellow brick road’ of life together, to conquer our fears, to overcome our old prejudices – to ‘get the wicked witch of the west,’ the wickedness of social injustice, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and militarism.
We’re here to provide our children with an experience that will sustain them along the road ahead: they need to discover what the scare crow, tin man and lion discovered – to be assured that they already have the ability to think for themselves, to figure things out in their life as they travel, making friends, finding companions on their journey.
We’re here to nurture compassion – represented by the tin man’s desire for a heart.
We’re here to help one another find the courage it takes to live this life … the courage to face the changes and challenges, the losses … the courage to grow into the person we want and need to be.
We’re here to feel at home in our own shoes, in our own skin.
It’s all there in that little story. Frank Baum said he wrote it to entertain children – a worthy endeavor. But the movie with Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr and Jack Haley has taken on a religious quality, providing us, as well as our children, with a marvelous myth that endures and expands, helping us to endure and to expand.
Let’s sing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ together:
Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true
Some day I’ll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemondrops
Away above the chimney tops
That’s where you’ll find me
Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can’t I?
Some day I’ll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That’s where you’ll find me
Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can’t I?
If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can’t I?
Closing words:
Now, as we take one more step along this journey we share, may our footprints leave remembrances of kindness, may our fingerprints leave remembrances of compassionate touching, and may the echo of our voices ring in the ears of those who have heard us to remain as a reminder of the companionship that unites us on the journey of life.