pastor prayers

This is an abridged version of the sermon preached at First Parish in Milton, MA on Sunday, November 27, 2011.  The first Sunday in Advent.

I know you’ve seen the street sign, too. Usually found in residential neighborhoods, it’s meant as a caution to drivers who might otherwise barrel down the streets thoughtlessly. Slow: children – those two words and one punctuation mark speak volumes. “This is a place where children live, children who are loved. Please drive slowly so that they may live.” And of course beyond that there is even more: all the layers of hopes and dreams their parents have for them, the perennial challenge of protecting and raising children well, the sense of vulnerability we all have. I know that’s what the sign means to evoke for us, but I often read it a little differently. It makes me pause all the same, but it also makes me smile.

Sometimes I like to imagine that it says: Slow, children.

Slow down, children of the universe

Go slow, children of the God who made all life in its mysterious beauty and fragility.

Take it slow, all of you who are still growing, though past a certain age you are loathe to admit it.

Slow, because life is a great gift we are meant to savor, not gulp.

Slow, children! Life gets its deepest meaning when we have space of heart and presence of mind to let all of it in.

We grow best, all of us still-children of someone and something greater than us all, when we have the time to let the wisdom of our experience guide our choices.

To do that we must move slowly, children.

Maybe I intentionally mis-read the sign because it’s exactly the reminder I need, daily.

I can’t drive through enough residential, family-filled streets to keep it current in my mind.  It’s the combination that is key.  To take it slow, and that we are children.  We rely on the benevolence of others for our well-being.  We are held in the arms of a force of life and love grander than ourselves.  We are still growing into who we are and what it means to be human in this world, (and though we might fight it, we pray we never stop that growth.)  We have plenty of responsibilities, including being an adult in our work and in our relationships and as we parent our children and care for our parents and do the million other things asked of us as people of a certain age. Still, deep in the heart of each of us, where the greatest wonder and the deepest fears and the highest hopes reside: there is a child.

The pull is strong this time of year to turn inward, to measure our lives in some way. The moment may come somewhat uninvited: the moment of irritation intertwined with a hint of inferiority as the shameless braggart in the family waxes eloquent about the accomplishments of self or children. Or it may be a welcome surprise: catching up with a distant cousin, an old friend, a faraway sibling, a beloved parent, and realizing connections never before explored. It is rare that we can escape the holiday season, no matter how hectic our lives, without at least a moment of pause in wonder, in celebration, in grief, in contemplation of the meaning of our lives.

That place in us that is still someone’s child, that growing, glorying, grieving place comes a little closer to the surface this time of year. Its work is deep and real and true, and most poignant with us as the nights lengthen and the festive lights are hung. It’s there, waiting for a little attention. Waiting for a chance to grow us more fully into ourselves.

As faiths around the world have known for millenia, we belong to the cycles of nature. As the earth pulls back its energy into itself, so must we. A lot happens under that surface if we will let it. If.

That work can be full of joy, but it can also be tearful, and angry and difficult.  Slowing down means sitting squarely with disappointments we had shrugged off but still hold as wounds.  It means letting in our sadness at the loss of loved ones we miss especially this time of year.  It means sitting with our own fears of inadequacy, our sorrows at mistakes we’ve made.

The outward pull of the season is surely an enticing escape: Shopping! Lights! Carols! Shopping! Food! Shopping!

In this season of faith in the coming of god in the most common and plain form, to the most common and plain people, let us not be too busy to watch for the new life stirring in our own hearts. Let us make space not for the shoulds but for the needs of our souls.

If that is reveling in lights and taking in concerts and feeling exalted by it all: do it!

If that is giving ourselves and others permission not to rush, to take a much-needed rest, to play, to reflect with dear friends: do it!

Remember also that the moments savored in stillness take us to great depth, though the world may cry out against it.  It could, in fact, be that the transformation we await so fervently in our world needs us to slow down, to re-adjust our internal clocks to sacred time, to envision a world transformed by a depth of living that honors the sacred in each and all and reminds us of what we really need: each other.

Slow, children!

Walk in barren woods without a rush.

Curl up with a good book even though there are cards to be written.

Play a board game with a loved one when the chores aren’t yet done.

Slow, children.

I know it’s not what the sign means, but imagine with me for a moment that this is exactly the message we need to take in this Advent season. What if we let it play in our heads, imagine it spoken to us in the voice most likely to make us gladly obey:

A doting grandmother or wise grandfather,

A goofy aunt or a doddering uncle,

A compassionate but stern friend.

Slow, children:

When memories of loved ones lost return as you miss them

Baking the handed-down recipe without its signature chef,

Untangling lights without the smart-alec comments of Uncle Bob,

Missing the annual letter from the friend who passed away too soon.

Slow: children

Slow with your tender heart,

Slow with your fond memories,

Slow, as you let the loved ones who are still with you

know a bit of what is stirring in your soul.

Slow, children:

Slow with the hurts and angers, the disappointments and dismay,

Let them have their place too, in the lengthening nights,

Ask them what they in their uncomfortable truths have to teach you.

Slow, children, with the knotted places in your bellies.

And with the joys?

Especially slow with the joys, dear ones.

With the delight of new love in life,

the eager anticipation and heart-bursting welcome of a new child,

the satisfaction of work that feeds the needs of our spirits,

the delight in the well-being of our nearest and dearest,

the thrill at thanksgiving for the many little miracles that can make all of life a celebration

Slow, children: the gifts of this life were meant to be savored.

Let god arrive in us and with us in every form, that we may bring to birth new life, new truth, new love in this magnificent world.

Amen.

This is the text I wrote as the basis for my homily at the UU Vespers service at Occupy Boston on October 16, 2011.  I spoke without notes, so the homily delivered was ‘adapted.’

Isn’t it great to be here?

It is a thing of beauty to see people coming together across political persuasions and ages and ethnicities and just about everything else in order to say: we are all in the same boat.

In order to say: we are all in the same boat and we are not about to let it sink!  It is ours to repair and restore together.

We are not going to wait, and we are not going to use the same crew that built the broken ship to repair it.

This is our work, this is our world.  Let’s make it whole together.

This is a beautiful thing.

Its an act of faith to be living out here, or to come here and stand in solidarity.

It’s an act that is part of our faith, a faith that calls us to live the redemptive and the hard promise that we are all destined for the arms of a love that knows no limit.

We are all destined for that land.

“We are the 99%” is the slogan of this movement, and we are there with it.

But our faith calls us to know deep in our bones what it means to be 100%.

100% born from a thread of goodness and hope that is woven through 100% of beings on this planet.

100% capable of goodness.

100% able to see and cultivate that goodness in ourselves and each other.

100% the ones in whose hands this world rests.

100% infused with the power of divine love, forgiveness, grace.

We are powerful when we are in touch with our anger.

We are powerful when we call out injustice, and when we hold accountable those who have done wrong.

We are even more powerful when we do all of that and keep in our hearts and minds

The truth that even those whom we call out for their injustice are a part of us

And when we account for the fact that in smaller ways we too have been part of the system we want to transform.

100% of us are destined for the arms of a love that knows no limit.

100% of us were born and offered the breath of life from a source we cannot fully name.

100% of us are in this boat together.

100% of us hold the power to turn the ship around, to mend its leaks, and repair its sails to set it right again.  We need all our stories, all our hearts, all our spirits, all our anger and frustration, all our hope and laughter to make it new.

Let us be together. 100%.

 I’ve mentioned already that I’m surprised at how taken I am with the Occupy America protests.  That has only become more so after spending time at Occupy Boston last Sunday evening.  I understand the criticisms that are flying, from folks who find it ridiculous for people to camp in a public park to protest injustice, to folks who have heard a wimpy cry against an “evil 1%” but not enough details of demands.  Then there are the quibbles about where the statistics come from, and who the movement speaks for.  The list, like the internet, goes on and on and on.

The Occupy movement has seemed a lot like a Rorschach test for those who are determined to be against it.  Everyone sees what they want to see, and hears the message they are most afraid of or triggered by, and then is critical about the lack of a coherent voice or program or policy.  What others see as the movement’s weakness, though, I think is in many ways its beauty.

Let me be clear: I am not fond of the wishy-washy.

In this case, though, the message and the medium and the whole protest ethos is one that demands – subtly, but powerfully – that we change the way we think and do and be.  It would take away from the strength of the protest to have a list of clear demands because in some way demands that are clear now would be working within the structures of the broken system.  The unity is around the central point that it is not okay for 1% of the people in this nation to hold (according to conservative estimates) 20-35% of the nation’s wealth.  It’s around the fact that taxation rests disproportionately on the middle and working class while corporations that have moved their jobs elsewhere to increase profits manage to get away with paying little to no taxes.  The system, or rather systems, that have let this become the reality can’t be trusted to be the vehicles for the change that is needed.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.  (Romans 12:2)

By not having the plan in place already, the Occupy folks have embarked on a journey of that discernment, and they are leading us in doing it with them.

How may we be transformed by the renewing of our minds?

Our minds that have been worked into well-worn ruts around how much we need and where our money should go.  Our minds that have been told that the only meaningful measure of success or achievement is financial gain.  Our minds that have been convinced that the only way to have a capitalist economy is to remove all regulations.  Our minds that say that unchecked wealth is a God-given right, never mind who is exploited to make it possible.

Testing those minds is always a worthy endeavor, and something liberal faith has presumed to be about for centuries.

Occupy Boston (as Protest Chaplain Marisa Egerstrom has put it so well) feels and looks like church.  It is holy ground, not because it is perfect, but because there is spirit alive there, and a sense of possibility, and a whole different way of seeing and being and doing.  God is present there in movement through human community, as human good lives in kindness, in compassion, in speaking the truths of the struggles of each and the struggles shared by all.  As Henry Nelson Wieman has put it and John Cobb amplified:

God is the process through which we are creatively transformed, and human good grows.  It can’t be controlled by the human will because it transforms the will.  It cannot be transformed by human purposes because it transforms human purposes.  …we are saved by grace and not by works… our creative transformation is not our own work.  We can place ourselves in situations where it is more likely to occur and stay open to it.  We cannot do it ourselves or make it happen.  We are saved by grace alone through faith.…

We need to find that which is trustworthy and to trust it, even when we do not know where it will lead.  [1]

I wish every church could embody that sense of living the truth and centrality of God’s presence and purpose in our midst, and I hope we can all learn from the power and the witness of this movement.  May our minds be transformed, that we may discern what is good, and acceptable, and perfect.

I write this as the Occupy Wall Street movement spreads across U.S. cities at an astonishing rate, and I’ve been reading with interest the reports of what’s happening in the midst of the seemingly well-organized unorganized movement.

I tend to be fascinated with, but never at the center of, this kind of activism. It never seems like where I stand on any issue can fit on a sign I’d want to carry, and I have a deep distrust of chanting mobs of people — even if they are all my friends. I’d much rather be around a table in deep discussion over disagreements. But that’s easy to say, since it’s rarely how politics (at my level, anyway) are played out.

It has been inspiring to hear that there is a respectful, kind and earnest vibe at the Occupy gatherings. One that holds lots of rage, but isn’t consumed by it. One that is working to be the change it wishes to see in the world, by working hard to listen to feedback about the missing voices and self-correct; to enter into dialogue about points of honest disagreement and work toward consensus; to manage everyone’s desire to get their most passionate concern on the list of demands against the need to have a clear goal and unified purpose. It hasn’t been perfect, but it’s such a joy to watch from the sidelines and see people working on being good while trying to do good. Whatever happens with the demands or the protests, as long as they are doing that work faithfully, they will have my heart.

I’ll be at Occupy Boston for a vigil with other UU’s Sunday evening October 9th at 5:30. Join us!

It used to be the norm that pastors of New England churches would leave for the coast of Maine (or if they were of a different kind of money, the Cape or Islands) about this time in June, to return around Labor Day weekend.  The son of a former minister of my church told me at his father’s memorial that he had fond memories of summers in Maine, where the kids played to their hearts’ content while their father spent the days reading in the study.  I still enjoy a break from preaching during the summer, though the church – at my encouragement and to my delight – now has worship services through the summer.  The work of maintaining a church organization really is year-round – planning collaboratively to create worship and programs to feed and inspire the souls of folks of all ages for the coming year, finding new strategies for fund-raising, cultivating lay leadership and strengthening the staff team (not to mention cleaning the office) all make for a full summer.  Add Little League games and extended family commitments and there are exactly zero days remaining for the quaint practice of old.

Since my friend Michelle has asked, here’s my response to what I’m doing on my summer ‘vacation,’ as a prayer:

Spirit of silliness and sunshine, deep soul of rumination and rain, give me moments of summer rest in which to feel you near.

God of all creation you made us all so joyfully!  Remind us that when we wrap ourselves in en-joy-ment we nestle closest to you.  For true joy knows well that the feeling we savor could so easily be otherwise, and keeps the memory of those times tucked just under its quickening heart.

So let me find you at the ball field and homemade lemonade stand, in shady woods or bustling beaches, in daydreams that take my attention from what I call my work.  Beckon me back to wonder and celebration, whether they come in long stretches in exotic locations or in brief mundane moments.  Meet me in the produce aisle, Holy One, at the gas pump, in the line at the bank, while I change diapers or check for ticks.    Hold me in your care, remind me whose I am, and help me live in the joy and the challenge of your unending love.

Amen.

Reflection and prayer on receiving news of an old friend’s death:

God of all creation, hearts break to see an exquisite part of your creation lost – a life ended too soon.  How is it, why is it, that the very things that make us uniquely who we are – our passions, our impulses, our will to act – are the things that, unchecked, can be our undoing?  It seems cruel, and yet we have always known the truth of it.  Let us have some harsh words with you, Holy One, because seriously: this should not be.

The news comes that someone who was woven into our hearts at a young age, at a specific time and place, is gone, and an ache pulls right at the center of our hearts, where that connection, no matter how long untended, is lodged firmly as ever.  We want to trust that those we have ever had in our hearts are okay.  Reminded they may not be, we wonder at the vulnerability of each and every life, yearn to pull everyone close who has ever mattered to us, and weep at the fact that we cannot.

Creator spirit, please take our dear one back to the source of all life, and let him know the deepest peace and abiding love that are his birthright. Let his brilliance and humor and kindness add to the store of good and right and holy things in this world and the next.

God of love, hear and hold our sorrow.

We give thanks for the ties that have bound us to others throughout our lives.  They have made us who we are, taught us how to love, how to grieve, what to fear, and how to hope.  In the heartache, may we make of our love a wide vessel to hold those closest to the dear one lost, sending prayers for strength and comfort.  As we search for meaning, may we bring to life old memories, and let his life live on in our own.  Let his memory may be a blessing even if his loss is never understood.

May light perpetual shine upon you, Craig.

Amen.

I’ve been ruminating all week on the many disparate but powerful things that have been all over the news.   What is the ‘right’ way to respond to Bin Laden’s death?  How can we wrap our minds around the brutality of the Syrian government?  The bombing in Marakesh?  The suffering of the people in North Korea?

This year, the scale of the drama of the news coverage compared with the domestic tranquility of our celebrations of Mother’s Day were particularly unsettling.  You may already be well-acquainted with the fact that Mother’s Day began with a proclamation from Julia Ward Howe in 1870 calling for ‘a general counsel of women without limit to nationality’ to gather

“To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.”

The proclamation is not about women who are just pulling hot pies from the oven with perfectly coiffed hair and spotless aprons while birds perch on their shoulders as they sing merrily about the joys of domestic endeavors.

The proclamation is fierce.

It’s about dropping everything that offends the spirit and taking up a bold and counter-cultural vision.  Women can and should take no more of their men returning home ‘reeking of carnage.’  Women should not be willing to send their sons to ‘unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience.’  This world is devastated, and it is ours to restore it to God’s vision of peace and justice.

Most mothers I know are riddled with guilt about how stretched thin they feel, with how little they know they measure up to the pie-baking, starched-apron ideal.  We’ve yelled at our kids within the last 48 hours and felt terrible afterward.  We worry over whether we’re doing right by their learning needs and giving them enough quality time and helping them become good people.  We’re usually convinced we’re not doing it well enough, and we’re sure there’s always more we could do.  So it’s really good that at least once a year there is a day to affirm that we’re on the right track.  No matter how we’ve fallen short, our kids do love us, and our partners will help them show it with breakfast in bed or a handmade card or a macaroni necklace.  I know I need it.

In the midst of that need I want us to remember the fierce abandon with which Howe was calling for women to rise up.  Whether or not we’ve been perfect mothers in all the culturally celebrated ways, the proclamation reminds us that our task is bigger than slicing the oranges for the soccer game or filling out the permission slip for the next field trip.  It’s bigger than our carb intake or reducing fine lines on our faces.

The fierce Mother’s Day is about how deeply we know in our bones that there is another way to live, a better world that beckons us – not from beyond this one, but right here within it.  It’s a world in which each person is known as a child of God, a God whose presence shines forth through who they are at their very best, when they are loved and whole and free.  It’s about the urgency of building that world with all of who we are, and inviting everyone, everywhere, to be our allies.

Tomorrow morning a good number of people from my congregation will be walking in the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute’s 15^th Annual Mother’s Day Walk for Peace.  We will walk with women who have lost their children to wars abroad and those who have lost their children to the wars on the streets of Boston.  Walking with people from many different faiths and neighborhoods, in fellowship and in love, we let it be known that violence does not have to have the last word.  We live the Easter message that life and love can defeat even the cruelest death if we will have the courage to work together and help to build God’s kin-dom here on earth.  We lend our feet to the walk and our hearts to the prayer that one day no mother will have to mourn the loss of her child to violence.

Still, we’re haunted by the loss of life around the world, the tyrannical regimes and terrorist attacks.  And we pray that with each step, we can bring ourselves closer to some unity that might redeem the violence with acts of love, not sentimental, but fierce, determined and true.

Here’s the letter I wrote to the New York Times responding to Ross Douthat’s “A Case for Hell” before I realized they had a 150-word limit for letters to the editor.  We’ll see if they print the 150-word version, in the mean time I’ll use this forum for what I thought was a very succinct response.

To the Editors:

Ross Douthat  rightly points out the theological problem of getting rid of hell without a corresponding incentive for people to do good.  If everyone is going to end up in heaven, why in the world would we ever be good?  Mr. Douthat might be surprised to learn that many of us don’t need to believe Tony Soprano is in hell in order to behave morally.
His argument rests on the same stilted theology that has folks who value reason and faith streaming out of so many churches.  A God who is an external agent, omnipotent and doling out judgment – now or in the future – is one that many people of faith parted with long ago.  An omnipotent God who could be considered good surely wouldn’t allow the kind of suffering we see in the world, and certainly wouldn’t be less powerful than the human will toward destruction (or, if you prefer, the Devil’s temptations).

For many contemporary people of faith, God is not foremost a personal agent, but the creative force that moves through all life.  The source of all good, the ground of being.  Universalism names that source divine love, and holds that the power of that love flowing through all people can and does save us.  But it doesn’t work independently: we need to bring it forward in ourselves and each other.  If that goodness were to come to its fullest fruition in all people, we would be in heaven – not in some distant realm, but right here and right now.  We know that we have the opposite forces flowing through us, too.  We choose to obey our destructive impulses for a million different reasons.  When we do so, we create and perpetuate needless suffering, right here and right now.

The fact that such suffering is reversible, at least for future generations, gives me all the urgency I need to work for and pray for good/God to work through as many of us as possible, for as long as it takes.  It is ours to realize the realm of peace and justice that the scriptures of so many religions extoll, no matter what happens to Mr. Soprano.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.