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Surprises 12-3-06 The Rev. Ms. Barbara J. Pescan
Call to worship – by Madeline L’Engle Ann McCallister Worship Associate
Reading – written by Ann McCallister
It is said that grace can be "an unexpected, undeserved good." I feel resistance to the idea that grace is ever undeserved, probably because in the work I do as an attorney, I represent convicted murderers, abusers, burglars, car thieves, drug dealers, etc., all of whom, whether guilty or innocent, need as much grace as possible to give them another jumpstart to hopefully connect with their higher selves and heal.
Sermon – “Surprises” Rev. Pescan
For me, there is no better book that describes living in grace than Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard. The book was published in 1974, and since then I must have owned thirty copies of it and given twenty-eight of these to others to read. It keeps drawing me back to seeing and hearing the world around me in ways that make it evident that we live among miracles, we live in a grace-filled world of blessings and we don’t even know it. And, not being fully aware of the amazing life that surrounds us, we live half-lives so much of the time. Wendell Berry cautions us this way: “To treat life as less than a miracle is to give up on it.”
Not always beautiful or soft and cuddly, this life. Still, when we are grabbed by the scruff of the neck and pointed toward some astounding human propensity for cruelty, or pointed toward our vulnerability by a diagnosis, we are led toward truths of our existence that must claim us, must make us understand that life is more than we had thought, that we are more than we had thought we were.
On the inside back cover of the paperback I have carried around for twenty years or so, I have noted particular passages of Annie Dillard’s that grip me every time I return to them. Page 61-63, the Polyphemus moth, chrysalis dissolved in a jar and, let out, walking away folded, unable to open its wings; and her description of a moth that gets too near a lighted candle, gets its wing stuck in hot wax and is immolated as a wick makes a glorious flame; page 35, the tree with the lights in it; page 85, the 30-foot tree with the clothes in it; page 114, the number of leaves that fill a big elm in a single season; page 99, the psychological present; frog deflated by water bug that dissolves and drinks its insides.
But, my favorite excerpt, the one near the end of the book that I love so much is the one about saying Yes to life; about going up into the gaps to meet life, no matter what it offers --- surprises, gifts, a good shake by the gods of irony, tragedy within which there is, yet, some saving and savor. Here it is:
Thomas Merton wrote, “There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.
We raise political quibbles when we should be raising hell about Darfur, about Iraq, about abused women and children, about health care and a safety net for all our citizens. We are making do when we should be making noise, and making common cause with evangelicals, with whom we may disagree on most things, but on taking care of the earth we are in agreement.
The current administration is spending 57 billion dollars on this stupid war, almost 3000 American dead, who knows how many Iraqi dead, when the government should be reinstating the Civilian Conservation Corps or establishing a 2-year national service for 18 year olds, and shoring up the health of America’s infrastructure and the health of its people, urging sacrifice and national energy conservation while developing alternate energy sources like mad and raising a national gas tax to fifty cents a gallon to do it.
There are places we have an inkling of but whose dimensions in our own souls we do not know because we have not asked ourselves to go there. Places near fear where there are wells of courage and creativity; places where there is weeping and sorrow that cannot be touched by any but deep spiritual cleansing. And, there is a place in each soul --- an approach, a decision point --- where you know you are whole, and that you can, and that you will. Marianne Williamson, in A Return to Love, wrote:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. You were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.
Imagine Mary, told by the angel Gabriel that she is pregnant and going to give birth to a son whom she is to call Jesus. The passage in Luke is as beautiful and evocative as anything in the Bible. How? she asks, since I am a virgin. The gospel writer writes that Gabriel responds: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” I see Leda and the swan. I imagine clouds parting and rays of sun shining into Mary, blinding her with the truth that she is worthy of God’s notice, worthy of this immensity, worthy to bring forth this goodness.
Forget cynicism for a moment and imagine you are a fourteen year-old girl who understands in a flash that you are good and special and utterly whole. And, that your body is a miracle and holds secret miracles within it. Imagine you are Mary, and, that the universe has noticed you and will entrust you with birth, knowing you will say Yes, and carry this treasure and deliver its potential safely into the world.
This Christmas story --- for all the dross made of the gifts of the Magi, of pre-season deep discounts on cheap goods no one needs, for all the sales on eBay of 10 year old toasted cheese sandwiches with the face of Mary baked on the bread --- the Christmas birth story, the miracle of salvation in the body of a baby, is surely about us, about you and me. It is surely about being born again and again, in unlikely places in unlikely times; repeatedly born to chance after chance after chance for the salvation of the world. This is the message of Universalism. All of a sudden, this girl is going to bear the son of God. She, herself, chosen as a child of God. All of a sudden, over in Judea at Zechariah’s house, Mary’s relative, old, barren Elizabeth, is at the beginning of her third trimester. Everybody’s full with child, all of a sudden. Even old, barren souls are big and juicy again, brimming with possibility.
In the biblical narrative, of course, this had been happening since old Sarah eavesdropped behind the flap of her tent and heard the angel say she was to bear a son: she laughed out loud. Then, she heard he son’s name was to be Isaac, which means “He laughs.”
All this laughter, this joy at birth (which cannot have been easy in those days, with no epidurals, no attendants, and not much after care, so a live birth was probably a miracle in and of itself), all this laughter is about the miracle of birth-at-all in this world, and not only physical birth. It is about the miracle of coming to ourselves, of waking up to our precious human life. We are raising objections when we should be raising joyful children, should be raising ourselves to know our worth, should be turning toward each other with appreciation for the miracle of each one of us.
Pablo Casals, cellist and peace activist, once wrote: Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe,
The traditional Masai greeting is “How are the children?” And, the traditional answer, given even by warriors with no children of their own, is “All the children are well.” That means that peace and safety prevail, and the daily challenges of existence do not preclude taking care of the children. (Adapted by Pat Hoertdoerfer from a speech by Rev. Dr. Patrick T. O’Neill, in REACH archives, UUA, February 1999)
And, what if we greeted each other that way when we met? And, what if it meant that we asked each other, How are all the children in the world? What if it meant, How are you down in your child self, down where you are vulnerable and whole and undamaged? What if it meant, How is the world, and how are all its creatures, and what shall we do today to touch the world with a tender hand?
When I think about these things I always begin and return to our relational selves. None of these things that worry us, that beset the world with fear and sorrow, with anger and hubris, will be solved by someone else, out there. We won’t solve any of it by thinking good thoughts. Cynics and critics will not resolve these things. We will move toward the healing of wars, and the rape of persons and planet, when instead of continuing to be mute, continuing to stifle, to kill that child in you and in me, we give birth to it again and again.
Surprise! The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. Surprise! It’s my sister as a young child, with her pronounced near sightedness. She hated her thick glasses [and, then, they were glass so they were heavy on her little nose]. But, at Christmas, she was able to take off her glasses and see a whole amplified, expanded, shimmering Christmas tree different than the one I saw, with or without my glasses. She is looking forward to doing just that again this Christmas. Surprise! A deficit turned into a gift.
Surprise! Forgiveness starts flowing from your heart toward someone you thought you were done with long ago. And, isn’t it a surprise discovering as a young adult that you can survive your first losses and, while not invincible, you can heal, and go on to succeed, to fall short, to live the whole thing, pain and all, and that life, and you, are good. Surprise! You didn’t get the job you wanted, but found the one you needed. Grace is when someone is there to hear you tell the story straight, no drama, for the first time, and to understand.
It is being in the airport and seeing troops in desert fatigues and, regardless of this stupid, dangerous war, letting your gratitude come to you whole and unobstructed --- for the soldiers and for this resilient country. It is the Clinton Foundation working with funds from a coalition of European countries and two Indian companies to broker a lower price on 19 antiretroviral AIDS drugs for HIV infected children, to be made available to 100,000 children in 62 countries by next year. It is Warren Buffet giving 38 million dollars to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Surprise! Grace makes a chink in the world’s armor of “it can’t be done,” and lets a little “could be” shine through. If we prepared ourselves better for “could be” we might see more of it.
This surprise of grace is that when we expect nature and life to be red in tooth and claw; short, nasty and brutish, it so often is not. I will end by telling you the story of a small wonder, from Barbara Kingsolver’s book of the same name. I have told it before, but, like the nativity story, it bears telling more than once.
On the first day of the bombing campaign in Afghanistan, the story came to Barbara Kingsolver about a baby in the forested hills of Lorena Province in Iran. A husband and wife, on their way back from working the wheat fields on a cool October day, saw running toward them the teenage girl left in charge of the babies while the adults worked in the fields. Crying and frightened, she tells them that their son is gone, she has already looked everywhere, inside their yurt, all around, but he is gone. Who knows what diverted her attention long enough for him to toddle away, --- another child, perhaps --- but the baby too small to accompany his parents to the fields has walked away from the other babies.
The parents refuse to believe her at first, and look and look – in the yurt, in his usual hiding places. But, no, he is gone. Kingsolver says: “I can feel how their hearts slowly change as the sediments of this impossible loss precipitate out of ordinary air and turn their insides to stone.”
So, they searched – first their own village, with neighbors helping, frantic as it grows dark and cold. The villagers wonder aloud among themselves – he is somewhere unsurvivable; a bear, someone wonders. Shhh – his mother might hear you, are you mad? Some people sleep that night, but not the parents. Before dawn they are out looking again, closer to the caves and oak woods of the mountainside.
Night falls again, and the third day dawns; and some people begin to give up, but not the mother and father, because they cannot give up (and we have all done this) they “bang and bang on the door of hope, and don’t anyone dare suggest there’s nobody home.” They go all the way up into the mountains, five kilometers away. The baby is only sixteen months old, took his first steps four months ago, he can’t have gone that far. But, still they search.
At the mouth of the next cave they enter – they have searched so many by now – they hear a voice. It is definitely a cry, a child. “Cautiously they look into the darkness, and ominously, they smell bear. But the boy is in there, crying, alive. They move into the half-light inside the cave, stand still and wait while the smell gets danker and the texture of the stone walls weaves its details more clearly into their vision. Then they see the animal, not a dark hollow in the cave wall as they first thought but the dark, round shape of a thick-furred, quiescent she-bear lying against the wall. And then they see the child. The bear is curled around him protecting him from these fierce-smelling intruders in her cave.”
Kingsolver then says she doesn’t know what happened next. She hopes they didn’t kill the bear, but simply, quietly took the child up in their arms, “praised Allah and this strange mother who had worked his will.” She hopes they didn’t kill the bear. She searched as far as she could on the internet, but doesn’t read Arabic, so couldn’t find an end to the story. “The baby was found with the bear in her den. He was alive, unscarred, and perfectly well after three days – and well fed, smelling of milk. The bear was nursing the child.”
We ask of this story, as we ask of the nativity story, What does it mean? How could this happen? And we ask, How could a huge, lactating bear take up this tiny human child and nurse him rather than tear him up for food? Had her own cubs been killed or were they dead of disease? Was she driven by pure mammal chemistry to take this tiny child to her and hold him gently? Then, what a gift of mammalian existence.
We are drawn to each other in cold places, Kingsolver suggests. He was crying from hunger, she had milk. She took him up and fed him. Miracle. Small wonder. Surprise!
Of what might humanity be capable, if we were drawn to each other in these interesting times, in the cold, hard events of these times, rather than driven apart? If, leaving off our work one day or one moment, human kind was shaken awake to our condition, our interdependent human condition; and if, like those parents, we let our hearts “slowly change as the sediment of [our] impossible loss[es] precipitate” out of our ordinary existence and turn our insides first to stone, and then back to the fluttering panic of a parent, we all of a sudden knew we are the ones, the ones to whom this child, these children, this planet, those children, that rain forest, these rivers, this air belong, belong as to our flesh, as to our mind and story and our own flesh.
And, of what might we be capable if, instead of treating these things as commodities to be used up, we saw the whole thing, all of life, as the miracle with which we have been entrusted by the universe, by life. Our air, my water, my body like theirs, like the children of the Sudan, ours, for which we are responsible.
Who could give up searching to find solutions to these sorrows? Who would not see that life is no less than a miracle? Which of us could not feel our hearts of stone melt into the fluttering hearts of birds in a cage, looking for the way out? Melt into the panicked hearts of parents whose child has gone missing and must be found, who cannot sleep nor rest until the child is found, found and borne forth safely into its own, good life?
Surprise! May the power of all that is good come upon us, may the truth that we are worthy of the miracle of this immensity, worthy to bring forth this goodness, come upon us, now. In this season, and in every season when forces within us and forces arrayed against us would divide us, may we see that we are whole, that we are wholly holy, and that we are entrusted to each other’s compassion and care. Let it be. And may we know blessing, blessing, blessing.
Unitarian Church of Evanston
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