by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell 

A sermon given June 8, 2003

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We come this morning to be reminded of our highest aspirations, to be inspired to bring our gifts of love and service to the altar of humanity.  May we know once again that we are not isolated beings, but connected, in mystery and miracle, to the universe, to this community, and to one another.

Truthfully, I really hate it when people tell me to count my blessings, especially when I’m going through a difficult period.  People will say—I’ve said it myself to others, said it to my children—now one day, you’ll look back on this hard thing, and you’ll be thankful.  Another learning experience—great!  Just what I needed.  Now, how about a respite, God?

You know, all my life I’ve been sort of thinking that one day all the challenges, all the losses, all the wrong turns would be done.  I would conquer all the obstacles to absolute happiness.  I would get to the point that I would have not only the perfect job, which I have, but the perfect partner, the mature and obedient and thankful children, the faithful friends, and then I would just hold onto all of that for the rest of my life, and then die old and in perfect health, with my large extended family, all happily married, all with children above average, standing around my bed.  What a fantasy!  How out of touch with reality.  We’re talking about stasis here, and life doesn’t offer stasis.  Every breath tells us that: we breathe in, we breathe out.  We take in, we let go.

The researcher who helped me with this sermon told me a story—she said she ran into a high school friend, after not seeing her since graduation, ten years before.  This friend—we’ll call her Sally—had always been very driven to succeed in whatever she attempted.  Her definition of success was very much the cultural definition: good grades, money, physical attractiveness.  And she had it all, this young woman.  Sally was a keen multi-tasker, rarely resting, always on to the next project.  But something had drastically changed in the 10 years since my researcher had seen her friend—Sally had become ill with rheumatoid arthritis, a severely painful and debilitating disease.  Sally explained that the physical pain was intensely hard to deal with—drugs helped, but the side effects were hard on her organs, and she wasn’t quite herself when she was on the medication. Some days she was unable to leave her bed, and she had to learn to depend on others, something that she was not accustomed to.  She had to face the fact that she could no longer compete for the best grades, or go for that promotion. 

So how do you face something like this?  A disease attacks, an accident happens, and all of a sudden your assumptions about what is possible are just turned upside down.  You are no longer the you that you thought you were.  Sally came to grips with her affliction by realizing that her powerful drive to be excellent was still very much with her.  What she had to change was her definition of success.  She re-evaluated her entire concept of what makes for a happy life.  Instead of the largely ego-centric successes that she previously coveted, she began to look outward, to discern the positive effect she could have on others’ lives.  She decided on a profession that would allow her to help other people with chronic diseases or disability.  Because of her own experience with illness, she could see past the physical weakness in herself and in others and could recognize the character and the courage that her patients embodied.  Her definition of herself and of others was not grounded in the disability, but in the quiet strength. 

Could we call Sally’s traumatic disease a blessing?  Not in itself, no, not at all.  But she was able to bless others because of how she faced that turn of fate.  She became a living testament to the power of the human spirit, and to the power of love.

When life throws us a monkey wrench, we have two choices, basically.  We can grow bitter or we can grow better.  Bitter or better.  Better meaning deeper, more understanding, more compassionate.  The key is acceptance of what is—not insisting that life be other than just what it is, but rather moving with it as it is. With that acceptance comes then an ability to recognize a different path than the one we thought we were on.  We take the wrong road—literally or metaphorically—we bemoan our fate, and then we are surprised by a land we never expected to see.  We miss a flight, and on the next flight we meet a person who changes our life forever.  What will keep us from our promise of blessing is only ourselves, when we insist on staying stuck in the past, in our failures, in our bad luck, in our losses.  Yearning for what is gone, we can’t see the beauty and the opportunity right in front of our faces.

There was a time when I wanted to be somebody else.  I think I felt that way all during my childhood and adolescence and even through much of my young adulthood.  I remember as a teenager carrying around in my billfold a quotation I had cut out of a newspaper, and it went like this:  “You have to play the game of life with the cards you’re dealt, so why expect a reshuffle.”  I really wanted a reshuffle.  I wanted a mother, for starters, and a father who didn’t drink.  I wanted to be pretty and popular instead of tall and geeky.  I wanted to have nice clothes.  I wanted to like other people.  I wanted to like myself.

I’ve been so lucky, so, so lucky, so blessed.  I didn’t get a different mother or father, but I grew to understand that they both loved me insofar as they were able.  I grew thankful for what they could give and did give.  I had a grandmother who prayed and read the Bible every day of her life.  I had a grandfather who believed fiercely in the value of education.  I had teachers who loved me and guided me and told me I was a good person and that I had gifts to give.  (You teachers who were honored today—and all of you who teach—please know what a precious gift you give, especially to those children who struggle at home.)  I have had therapists who’ve worked with me over the years and have helped me heal.

And now can I say, I’m all together, I’m whole, the work is done?  Hardly.  Every life continues to present its challenges.  We peel the onion down to the old pain, and we deal with it, and we find later that there is still more of the onion to peel.  And that’s all right.  You see, it’s the struggle that makes us reach out to others, in need; it’s the struggle that bonds us in common human experience.   It’s the on-going mistakes and missteps.   I have to keep coming back to my God and to those I love, in all humility, confessing my ignorance, my willfulness, my selfishness.

But I no longer wish I were someone else.  I have my story, and it’s a rich one, a fertile one.  Much can grow out of it.  I know what it feels like to struggle with liking yourself.  I’ve been there.  I know what it’s like to be treated as though you don’t have worth.  I’ve been there.  I’ve sold furniture out of my home to pay the mortgage.  I have counted the cost of a cup of coffee.  I’ve had to leave a marriage.  I’ve been an inadequate single mom.  I’ve been depressed.  I’ve been there.  I’ve been all these places.  And I bring this self, this woman, such as she is, in service.  And I say to the Holy One, use all of me, all of me, though I am just so human, and yet I have good gifts to give, and I will give these gifts, such as they are, when and where I can.

I am reminded of an experience I had with my spiritual director a few years back.  She is a Catholic nun, a Ph.D., speaks several languages, and is often at odds with the Church.  She is funny and unassuming and prays for me every day.  One day when I went for my time with her, I asked her casually, “How are you?” and she revealed to me that something was wrong with her eyes, and that her doctor had told her that there was a possibility that she might become blind.  I was aghast.  I asked her, “How are you feeling about this news?”  And she just quietly responded, “I’ve just been wondering what new calling God might have for me now.” 

That simple statement was perhaps the greatest single lesson she ever taught me.  A door closes, and we don’t stand there in front of the closed door and bang on it until our fists are bloody.  We don’t cry out, “Why me?”  We take some time, as long as it takes to adjust, and we breathe, and we shift.  And we ask the simple question, “I wonder what comes next.”  And we open our eyes and look around and see what we see.  For then we are able to see.  And another door opens, and we walk through it.

Those of you who have children know how you want to protect them.  How their pain becomes your pain—not just when they are two and have an “ow-ey,” but when they are twelve and strike out at the baseball game, and when they are twenty-five and the only woman they ever loved walks away, and so forth and so on, so long as you both shall live.  But you know, they have to have their hurts, their failures, their losses, for this is how they grow in wisdom and in beauty of character.  The best we can do is to face our own difficulties with courage, comfort them when they need comforting, and show them how to live with heart. 

The truth is that there is nothing so boring as a person who has never had much of a challenge in this world, who has had everything given to them, who has never really had a serious failure or loss to deal with. I’ve known people like that, haven’t you?  You get this sense of their just staying on the surface of things when you try to engage them.  On the other hand, people who have gone through troubles, and have faced those troubles, have been burnished by fire, and they shine from an inner depth. 

I remember once finding myself riding to a political event, a protest, with two other people.  We started telling our stories, as road trips will invite you to do.  We had all had, well, problematic childhoods.  One grew up in poverty, with nine siblings and no dad, and had had to cope with alcoholism, both in his family and in his own life. The other also grew up poor, had been deserted by one of her parents, and was neglected, and grew up to believe that she never really had much to offer.  Listening to them, I began to feel that my life was something like a Disney movie.  But there were the three of us, all of us very much alive, passionate people, giving ourselves to causes that we believed in, caring deeply about others.  

Everything around us in this culture tells us that the purpose of life is to get and to spend—this is a consumer culture—and so what I am about to say is profoundly counter-cultural: the purpose of life is to grow spiritually.  And that growth in the spirit includes joy and laughter and dancing and work and risk-taking and speaking truth to power.  It includes understanding that you were not made without purpose and that your gifts are unique—that there has never been anyone just like you, and there never will be—and that in order to be fulfilled, you must give those gifts. 

And so we allow ourselves to be surprised by turns of fate, but never defeated.  If the purpose of life is to grow spiritually, then obstacle becomes opportunity.  The dross of our lives, our God can turn to silver.  “Oh,” we say, “I never expected that.  And now, O God, since you have promised to be with me through all that is this life, where do we go from here?”  Lift the old wounds, the misdirections, to your heart, and say “Holy, holy,” and raise your eyes from the ground, and walk through the next door, the one standing open when you are ready and the time comes round.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we are dealt hard blows in this world, and we are tempted to turn away from you in our pain and loss.  We pray, then, for faith, so that our hope will not die.  We pray for courage, that we might be strong for those who are looking to us as mentors and models.  We pray for your healing presence, that we might see the door that stands open, waiting for us to pass through.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

Now as you go from this place today, take with you the gifts of faith and hope, and take the love and care of this community.  Go in love and go in peace.  Amen.

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Copyright 2003, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.