Because that, I don’t have.

What I do have is this simple truth about prayer: the words don’t matter.

I say this as a lover of words, and a lover of putting them together and then spending hours deciding if they’re too trite or too convoluted or too long-winded or just too too. I spend much of my days doing it and then marveling at how little I am paid for my long hours of toil. But it’s true: the words don’t matter. I say this in many more words than it should take, and none of them matter, either.

What matters is that there’s this thing deep in you that needs to come out and it needs to connect, or to make itself known. It needs a quiet place to really find itself. And then it needs to come out however it will, and as much as it can, just to say the thing that only can be said at that moment, by you, to the God who had some part in making you, and making you someone who would pray just like that.

And whatever comes should be good enough for any pastor, and any public made up of God’s people.

So I hope your pastor makes you pray in public. And I hope you bring it on by singing, dancing, speaking, clapping, shouting, crying whatever that place in you is yearning to let out. God will be listening in the form of every other one of us who needs to do the same.

The first child to get an award was lauded as “the most calm, collected, and thoughtful helper of all, who was always there with a considerate word for fellow campers and for the counselors.” When they said the name, up popped this skinny little five year-old girl, whose shoes looked like they could swallow her toothpick legs, and whose glasses were teetering heavily on her delicate face. She was adorable in the way that made me want to be able to follow her around through her childhood just to make sure no one is mean to her.

As soon as she heard her name, she exclaimed “Me? Really?” in the most sincere and genuine way, and turned bright red with what looked like a mixture of pride, embarrassment and shock. She marched up to get her construction-paper award, and on the way back, shaking her head, exclaimed with complete sincerity: “I had no idea I was that special!”

And then my eyes began to leak.

Eternal spirit, creator of all,

help us to nurture in each person the deep and unshakable understanding of the blessing of their being. Let none ever doubt that they are that special, that loved, that magnificent. Let the truth of it be known at our core, far past our culture’s thin veneer of meaningless affirmations. Help us to know the real thing by its failure to be drawn in to pettiness or self-aggrandizement, by its constant reminder that the God that makes one of us beloved makes us all beloved. May the power of that be-loved-ness be a source of great strength, so that we might meet its demand that we work for justice. May it fuel our courage to live and work for and with others. May we find the path to peace by making our home in the landscape of compassion.

Amen.

Spirit of life, visit us with your power.

Come to those who are still reeling from the trauma of violence in Knoxville, come to those who are feeling desperate and fearful, come to those of us who are newly aware of the fragility of life and the vulnerability of our beings.

We lift up in our midst the names of our brother and sister whose lives were lost to violence born of anger and alienation:  Greg McKendry and Linda Kraeger.  May their memories be a blessing to all who knew them, and may their nearest and dearest family and friends be held in the wide open embrace of love as they encounter the depths of their loss.

We send prayers of comfort and healing to those recovering physically from injuries sustained in the attack: Jack Barnhart, Linda Chavez, Tammy Sommers, Joe Barnhart, John Worth, Linda Barnhart and Allison Lee.  May their loved ones and caregivers be held in care and sustained by the power of hope.

Spirit of life, spirit of creative possibility, spirit of unending love,
come to those who are living in fear and uncertainty, who have been directly shaken by the desperate acts of a man possessed by anger and despair.  Let them feel the power of our love surrounding them, the strength of their own community upholding them, and the power of the living god moving in and among them.  Lift them up, embrace them, infuse them with the breath of life that heals and endures.

Let our hands, connected in this room, our arms aching to hold and comfort our family of faith in Knoxville, feel the source of life moving through them.

As we feel our own vulnerability, let us feel strengthened in community.  May these roots indeed hold us close to the source of all, so that we might feel nourished by the compassion and the passion for life and for justice that are the source of our growth.

Let our wings set us free to soar and see the ways this tragedy among our own family of faith connects us with those around the world experiencing the violence born of desperation, a world where too many are forgotten.  As we pray for our beloved kin in Knoxville, and let us also send our prayers to all those who feel lost or abandoned, whose lives have turned them toward violence as the only solution.   Let Jim Adkisson be held in the midst of his pain, and on the path toward justice let there be healing.   May love free us from the bonds of fear and help us honor the sacred spirit in each and all.

Let that great love that lifts us up, moves us forward, and gives us courage help us to find strength and solace in one another.

Amen.

I’m completely impressed with the youth in our church and their journey through our coming of age program this year. They are thoughtful, articulate, brave and kind and have forged a tight community across many differences in background, ability, personality and theology. Witnessing their developing selves — I’ve known most of them for the last four years, so from about age 10 to 14 — I am struck by just how precarious and how precious this journey of personhood is. From the distance of age, it’s incredible to see the different ways qualities like resilience can shine from a person. One offers a joke at every turn, eager to put others at ease and move things forward. Another is sure to align herself with the most powerful of the girls in the room for cover from the real or imagined possibility of exclusion. Yet another wraps himself in a shroud of mystery and intellect, seemingly impervious to the petty judgments of adolescents. We send them all forth with every wish that they will continue to grow into the selves they are meant to be, and for some reason I feel much more protective of these almost-adults than I do of the smaller children in our midst.

For children, disappointments usually center around learning the basics of how the world works: Lick too hard at the ice cream cone from one side, and it will pop off the other; you won’t necessarily get another. Scrapes and bruises hurt at the time and heal before you know it. People say unkind things, and sometimes you might too. The lessons aren’t always easy, but the exposure to them is character-building and forms perspective that will serve them well.

In adolescence, though, there is a greater vulnerability. The stakes are higher now, and their heartbreaks and disappointments from here on out have a different kind of consequence, will carry a different weight when it comes to shaping who they will be. Parents of adolescents sense that vulnerability and know it’s there beneath the too-common surliness, snottiness, or dismissiveness that helps their children develop their own identities and stirs in the parents a whole new layer of vulnerability of their own.

We gather in worship to celebrate the faith statements and the journey of exploration the youth have begun in coming of age. We all get a window into the powerful stuff that is moving in and through them, and for a moment, we all know the beauty of vulnerability. We find our strength in that fragile place, where the God of mystery and hope plants her seed.

Following is an excerpt of a stewardship sermon I gave in the fall of 2006 which attempts a Unitarian Universalist theological response to this question. It’s not complete. It draws heavily on an article by Walter Brueggeman (”The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity” in The Christian Century, March 24-31, 1999) .

In the beginning, the world is created and is proclaimed to be good — very good. All beings are blessed, and their blessing is that they are given life. The life is so dramatically present and plentiful that God takes a break, a sign that God’s own faith is strong enough to believe that this splendid creation isn’t going anywhere. And the people of Israel celebrate that abundance in the Psalms – they praise Yahweh with trumpet, harp and lute, they hear the promise that all will be offered in abundance, they celebrate the great gift of life and the miracle it is to be offered forgiveness and reconciliation every day. The fruitfulness of the world seems guaranteed. (This is a paraphrase of Brueggeman’s starting point)

But along the way, we humans also show that part of our blessed nature is to compete with one another, and to compete always brings us death and suffering. Cain murders Abel for fear that he might be more favored and the line of deceptions and death does not end. Each time the faithful stray, they are restored to God and they are also offered God’s blessing. The deepest value, the understanding of their worthiness is not in question – the God of the Hebrew Bible gets pretty upset sometimes, and in ways we may not like seeing a god behave – but say what you will, this is a God who doesn’t give up on liars, murderers, covetors, cheaters… in short, humans.

But what gets humans into trouble – and I mean serious trouble – every time is losing faith in the basic fact that our value does not come and go. Our value, in fact, has nothing to do with having plenty – it is the plenty we seek. When Pharoah has his dream of the famine in the land, the world is introduced on a large scale to fear-driven politics. The Jews in Egypt are persecuted, and come to live in their persecution believing that it is what they are worth. Chosen people or not, there is comfort in the familiar captivity of fear. After some time passes, a people can forget what it is like to live outside that reality.

We have our own captivity as individuals and communities in this particular nation and time. We live it now in politics that let us condone torture and secret wiretapping, politics that allow us to keep ourselves outside the reach of international laws and agreements. Politics that keep us separated, keep us suspicious. We live it now in believing that tax cuts are the greatest good we can do for ourselves, that individual savings will magically serve the common good by letting those who are wealthy buy more stuff.

Our ticket out of this captivity is not an easy one. It’s not something we can manage alone. It requires constant companions – and guess what? They are right around you in this sanctuary. They are as close by as social hour, a circle of trust, a shared social action project, a committee meeting, a casserole when you are in need. The ticket out of captivity is to have these companions help us to see and know. We need each other to witness to that abundance of creation, and the fact that we ourselves are part of it. That we are good, we are good, we are very good. And if we have not always been good at every moment, we must be reminded that we were made for goodness. It is our vocation to live. We can redeem one another as the source of all offers us each redemption. We can be part of the transformation of the world as, person to person, our connection becomes apparent and we see God’s blessing in one another.

When we realize our connection, with one another here, with all people everywhere, with the many generations that have worshiped and argued and laughed and grieved and judged and sinned in this very church, we can start to really feel the truth of abundance. The wonder, the miracle, the irrational, embarrassing abundance that does transcend the market economy.

When we unhook the conversation about wealth from judgments about personal value, we can have a different conversation about justice. To those who have much and measure their worth in that wealth, whether it’s the worth of their work or the worth of their person or both, any statement that the wealth must be given away will feel like it is stripping them of their value. Until we create a conversation about the theological truth of abundance, and start to spread the gospel of “enough,” it will always feel like redistributing wealth is stripping some people of worth and dignity when in fact the opposite is true.

No transformation can come without some discomfort. Given that any of us who is reading a blog likely has some privileges that others in the world don’t enjoy, we ought to feel discomforted by that. We ought to meditate on it faithfully in relationship with the God who surrounds us in unending love and calls us to visionary works of justice. Brueggeman points out that in the eucharist, Jesus took, blessed, broke, and gave the bread, and calls these the “four decisive verbs of our sacramental existence.” If we were in the habit of doing the same with the bread of our lives in whatever manner we are wealthiest (our talents, our treasures, our time), we might spend less time consumed with judging others and more time living in the midst of the reality of abundance. And somehow, I think a lot more clarity would come.

Not there yet myself, I remain deeply dependent on forgiveness, love, and challenge from the God who gives me life.

“You must understand about hummus” is one of the stranger things people (and I do mean more than one) have said to me upon learning that I am Iranian-American. It’s rarer than the searching looks that go with the response, “but you don’t look Iranian?!” with a tone of betrayal. But still, there it is.

About a year ago I received this very glossy brochure in the mail. It was a personalized invitation to join the National Guard. (My last name is emblazoned on the fatigues on the cover, even!) The goody bag, should I decide to RSVP in the affirmative would include: expedited U.S. citizenship, family medical and insurance benefits, and a $15,000 enlistment bonus. All to be a “Language and Cultural Specialist” for the good old U.S.A. And if that wasn’t enough, they might also be able to help with a home loan, tuition assistance and a retirement plan.

Someone finally found a use for the millions of Iranians living in the U.S.! Thank goodness, because I was starting to feel left out. For years I counted on the fact that no one who asked the origin of my name would be able to find Iran on a map. Now that the jig is seriously up, it’s about time we got what’s coming to us: a chance to help the U.S. do serious damage to our homeland. But in our own language, with some respect for the culture. Smooth.

The following month, I went with a group from church to be part of rebuilding efforts on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. There, we witnessed first hand how little had been done in 18 months to help rebuild, and the utter absence of the federal government. Except in the form of “formaldehyde-rich” trailers. We stayed at a camp that was built expressly for Katrina relief workers by volunteers. It was run entirely by volunteers, and was being bankrolled by Saudi Arabian philanthropists who reportedly were dismayed at how long the rebuilding was taking and wanted to do something to help. So they asked the folks at Camp Coastal Outpost what it cost to provide the materials for a new home. The answer: $15,000. The Saudis replied that they would like to see 150 houses built, and would pay for all the materials if the volunteers could coordinate labor.

Our whole time in Mississippi we heard story after story of debacles with FEMA trailers, threats of having them taken away, and the hell people went through to get medications and decent water and everything you’ve probably read about a million times over by now. I couldn’t help but wonder that with this going on right here at home, it was amazing that suddenly the National Guard had taken an interest in me and what I could do to help abroad.

I never encountered hummus while I was in Iran, but there are some things I think I do understand. Perhaps I should enlist and send my $15K to Camp Coastal. Perhaps we should take all the $15K bonuses, let good people of Middle Eastern heritage stay home in the U.S. and ask every one of us to go be part of building or rebuilding homes in every place where they are needed.

Blessed creator, thread that weaves us into common joy and common suffering, tug us tightly into awareness of our connection. Help us transform our anger into clear thinking and right relationship. Give us rest from the cynicism that is a well-hewn shield from the pain of daily assaults on the cultures of our birth. Surround us with your grace instead: a warm blanket of understanding that can transform ignorance and hatred.

Give us patience with the dots that don’t connect and courage to speak the truths that do. Illumine the paths that are before us and well within our power to effect: a trip to the voting booth tomorrow; a decision to confront our fears with information; the practice of offering compassion first and judgment later. And let us know your presence by rewarding our faith in people of good will by letting us see the good that can come of working in common cause. And give us strength to walk the road ahead.

Whisper to us constant words of wisdom. Let it be.

Last week, a beloved member of our congregation died. She lived a long life, and it was her time. But what goes with her is more than just the single, remarkable life she led. She connected us with a lineage that went back over a century, and in the stories she told and the people she encountered she covered the major events of the 20th century. There is nothing that feels like enough to mark such a passage, nothing that can convey the loss, or the memory, or the importance of that link. We offered a lovely funeral for her. The choir was spectacular. People shared stories, eloquently told on the spot. We enjoyed an elegant luncheon befitting our dear departed’s own generosity as a hostess. Now, it is for us to continue to tell the stories, to live the legacy she passed along to us in a million ways. And hope we were paying attention.

Gentle god, god who spans time and space and memory, touch our hearts with the significance of each life we encounter. Grant us the curiosity to ask the stories of those near to us and dear, and to sit humbly at their feet, be they old or young, and learn the wisdom of their lives. Bless us with the time to enjoy the gifts we offer one another in our simple presence. Help us remember again and again the stories of those who have gone before, who have made us who we are, and who gave us this rich heritage. Equip us with an ever growing understanding of yesterday, so that we might build tomorrow with compassion, with dignity, and with humility. In your holy names, o god, we pray. Amen.

Dwell with the caregivers whose hearts break as the lives of those in their care are torn asunder.  Dwell with your big-hearted children who offer so much of themselves in their daily work and still find themselves haunted by demons of unworthiness at night.  Dwell with those who work hard to make the holidays memorable, bright, or just endurable for others and toil so long and hard at it they have nothing left for those near and dear to them.  Dwell in the hearts yearning to hear the voice that says “slow down,” but find all around urgent pleas for comfort, for help, for companionship.

Dwell with those experiencing violence, those without homes, without heat, without food.  Dwell with them in the form of some bodily comfort, a human kindness, a relief from the burdens of living as your precious children in a world that is willing to see so little of your grace.  Dwell within us, and help us end our captivity by dreaming and making a new world.  And help us not consume ourselves in the process.  Help us learn our limits, that we might know the infinite.

Please.

Issues of diversity in my quiet suburban town have once again reached the forefront of our local news, with a racially and ethnically diverse school at the center of turmoil over redistricting and now over a case of alleged harassment of the child of a lesbian mother. We’re in difficult territory here, in a community where recent comers arrived for a sense of peace and security and decent schools. And where some longtime residents long for the simpler times before the pressures to educate so many children pushed property taxes sky-high.

It’s easy to dwell on the dangerous and small, to feel a bit surrounded by them, and to lose touch with the demands of truth and love. Notions of truth and love have themselves been co-opted by the sense of danger and smallness in the world, and we’re stuck with pressures to consider truth in terms of what danger it poses, and love in terms that ask no risk.

God of infinite understanding, god of justice and of love, god for whose existence I hope against hope for a sign…

We are here, regular folk who want all that is best for our children. We are here, hard workers who are anxious about keeping all of our financial commitments. We are here, kind people who want to be good, and be seen for our goodness. We are here, with many different skin tones and ethnic backgrounds and life experiences. We are here, tired from daily life and prone to recline into the comfort of old stereotypes. We are here, needing to see your presence in our neighbors. We are here, praying for wisdom and open hearts and sharp minds. We wish to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Please help us know which is which, and how to move with the spirit of life that makes all people free and encourages all people toward the good. The struggle is long, and some of us are praying for rest. Deliver us by helping us to see one another more fully, to offer forgiveness as well as challenge, and hope as well as commiseration. In your mercy, help us be truthful and loving.

I strain to get my hands in the right place on the drum at the right time.  I squint and my brain does backbends to figure out where my part fits into the layered fabric of a song.  And I know that it shouldn’t be this hard, that I probably look tragically constipated as I try to play and that is definitely not a look anyone wants in the rhythm section of their salsa band.

I was snapping out the clave rhythm along with my songs as I walked to church this morning, and had a moment of realizing that I was doing it without counting, to a fast song that has been my nemesis.  It was an exultant moment.  So I thought surely when I sat down at the drums this afternoon, ready to play along with the song, it would all come together in a new way and I would have mastered this one at last.  Wrong.  I’m not used to being such a very slow study.  I’m so deep in the land of my own unknowing that I’m sure this is a place I have been led by God, both comically and pointedly.

Beating heart of creation, loving, laughing presence, thank you for guiding me into the land of these layered tones.  Of violins and timbales and bass and cowbell and saxophone and trumpet.  Teach me patience with my hands, with my mind, and with my ears as we learn this new way of being.  Open my heart to the many ways I may take your lessons into the rest of my world — to move with the moment, to offer the constancy of presence, to trust my gut.  Steady rhythm of creation, let me have faith in your movement through me and confidence that it will not fail.  Let me offer it to others, especially when words will not do.  Embrace us all with your texture, your transcendent joy, your unbridled passion.  Poco a poco, llene mi corazon.