by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We gather in reverence this morning

Before the wonder of life,

Before all that we cannot know,

Before all that space cannot hold, and

Before all that time cannot measure.

Before the mystery of life, for which we give thanks.

Come, let us worship together!

Writing in the New York Times some years ago, Susan Schnur told a story that I shall never forget.  She wrote:  “Once, many years ago, sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room of my boyfriend’s parents’ house in Teaneck, NJ, I witnessed a performance of gratitude the likes of which I have never seen elsewhere.

“It was in the middle of the night—I was up with my own back pain—when the light flashed on in the upstairs hall and Jon’s father came padding down into the room.  Oblivious of me, he went into the kitchen, cut himself a slab of rye bread with a butcher knife, and then stood with it in the dining room under the street shadows.

“Chleb!’ he said finally, thrusting the bread into the air.  ‘Broit’—he held the bread against his pajama pocket.  ‘Pain’—he shook it.  ‘Lechem’—kissed it.  ‘Bread’—took a bite.

“This he did over and over, saying the word in more languages than I could imagine existed—thrusting, hugging, shaking, kissing, biting, exclaiming—until he stood in the room empty fisted.  Then he burped roomily and went back up the stairs to bed.

“I think of that night a lot, especially when I am up myself at 3 A.M.  . . . .

“I think:  what did I know about this man?

“That he loved his wife, yes.  His children.  That he checked on his kids too often in their rooms; changed the oil in his car every thousand miles; kept unnecessary dry goods in his basement.  His family used to laugh at him.

“He seemed sometimes, on an ordinary morning, almost stunned by the fierceness of his happiness.  He was, it now seems clear to me, exhausted by his blessings, in a sense, afraid of them.

“He was a holocaust survivor, Jonny’s dad.  The contrast woke him in the night.”

Ironically, sometimes the greatest source of thanksgiving is in the pain that we have survived.  The memory of the longing, the loss, circles round back to us, and we find that a certain sifting down has happened, even as we were unaware, and we have shifted to new place, the grieving mostly done, the hardness inside giving way to softness and receptivity.  And when we sense that shift, somewhere from the very depths of us comes gratitude, gratitude for the release, for the awakening, for the new sense of possibility.

Thanksgiving is not just a once-a-year thing.  It’s not about turkey—remember how we used to draw around our fingers, in elementary school, to create the semblance of a turkey on paper?—and it’s not about Pilgrims in funny hats.  Actually, the original Thanksgiving was about survival.  It was about the survival of religion, for the courageous little group that set out on the Mayflower—were so set on worshiping as they pleased that they would take a chance in a strange and inhospitable land—in a virtual wilderness.  Half of their group was dead by the end of the first year.  Half.  The local Native Americans could have slaughtered these interlopers, but instead chose to save their lives.  So on that first Thanksgiving, these Pilgrims got down on their knees and thanked their God for just being alive, just for surviving.  They had buried their dead.  They had harvested their first crops. They celebrated with games and feasting.  That’s what Thanksgiving is about—new life, surviving, having a new chance.  That’s how deep it goes.  I would call it, in fact, call the impulse to give thanks a primal instinct, and basic to all religious life, basic to what we call worship.

But I think we are rarely this deeply engaged in thanksgiving, I mean in this primitive and original way, giving thanks with our whole being, living in a context of thanksgiving.  No, I think not, and I wonder why not, I wonder:  what are the barriers to this deep joy in our lives—for it is a sense of awe and wonder and joy that I speak of.  One problem that many of us have is a surfeit of what we really need, and when we have an excess, we may not value what we have.  Again, paradoxically, it is loss that can lead us to thanksgiving.  We have to know what it means to want, to be without, to fear, to hurt—and then, oh then, we know the difference.

I remember some years ago being with a family on Christmas day, a family of some means—parents and grown children and two grandchildren.  I was invited over for breakfast and the opening of the gifts.  The house was in no way ostentatious—but the living room was twice the size of the average living room, with a vaulted ceiling.  The Christmas tree must have been 15 or 20 feet high, and beautifully decorated with family ornaments that had been gathered over the years, and the presents were stacked high around the tree.  Everyone received lots of presents, including me—but it was the children (they must have been about 5 and 7) who were really overwhelmed with gifts.  They would rip the paper off a present, look at it for about 2 seconds, and say, “Cool!” and then throw it down and reach for the next package.  This went on and on, until the living room was a virtual sea of boxes and paper.  And because I love this family, and I love these children, I felt concerned—I felt sorry for these children, for I saw no gratitude here; I feared that they were not developing modesty, humility, compassion—but rather a sense of entitlement.  I was afraid that they would expect more, more, more of everything out of life, and end up with less of what is truly valuable.

Other conditions of the human spirit can stand in the way of thanksgiving, too.  One of these I’ll just call, “Keeping the lid on.”  I got that phrase from my therapist/trainer when I was studying Gestalt therapy.  I remember saying to him one day, “I’m just bored,” and he said, “Boredom is nothing but keeping the lid on.”  Oh, my gosh, I thought—he’s right!  Unacknowledged grief or anger can shut you right down, can take the life right out of you.  Or maybe the grief or anger is acknowledged, but nursed and cherished and kept close at hand.  If you’re filled with grief or anger, there’s no way for thankfulness to get a foothold.  There’s no way for that expansive joy to enter your life.

Physician Rachel Remen tells the story of how she raged against her fate when she was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease.  She became very ill at 15 and had to struggle with this chronic disease from that time on.  She said she had to consult her disease on the simplest matters.  Would she have the strength to walk up a flight of stairs?  Could she sit through a movie without needing to leave because of agonizing stomach pains?  She remembers feeling the sort of rage that only an adolescent can feel.  She hated all the well people, hated the side of her family that had passed these genes to her.  She hated her body.  She was in this state of rage for almost 10 years.  Shortly before her final year of medical training, something happened that changed her forever.  She was offered a senior residency in a fine hospital, but she told herself she could never do it—she could hardly do the work she was presently doing, she thought.  Here was one more dream stolen.  She drove out to the beach, to think.  As she walked along the water’s edge, she saw others her own age, romping in the sand, and she remembers thinking, “This disease has stolen my youth, my vitality, from me.”  She did not yet know what it had given her in exchange.

In response to these thoughts, Rachel felt a wave of intense rage flood through her.  But this time she did not drown in it.  She acknowledged it, felt it deeply, and let it go by, and then something inside her said, “You have no vitality?  Here’s your vitality.”  Shocked, she recognized the connection between her anger and her will to live.  Her life force was just as intense, just as powerful as her anger, she realized, and for the first time, she experienced that life force directly.  In that moment she glimpsed something fundamental about herself: at the core of that self, she has an intense love of life, a wish to participate fully in life, and to help others to do the same.  This love of life—again, paradoxically—had grown large in her as a result of the very limitations of her life.  Like the power of a dammed river, she writes.  Like the power of a dammed river, breaking loose.  She took the residency, and never looked back.

I think about the image of Rachel on the beach, watching the other young people, envying their perfect lives, their perfect bodies, not able to acknowledge the realities of those other lives—which undoubtedly would include much suffering—but she could not even imagine theirs, because of her own pain.  Envy is so foolish, makes us so utterly self-referential, so lacking in compassion and in thanksgiving.  And yet it is so easy when things aren’t going well to become envious—to think, “If only I were smarter, or more charming, or more good looking.  Or taller.  Or thinner.  If only I had more money . . .” How much more money? “Just a little more.”  We all want to be, like the children from Lake Woebegon, well above average.

Let me tell you a story about a horse.  The greatest racehorse in history—but you’ve probably never heard his name.  His name is Eclipse, and he was born in 1764 in England.  Eclipse was unbeaten in his lifetime, and about 80 percent of today’s thoroughbred racehorses have a little Eclipse in their pedigree.  Upon his death, his body was preserved by the Royal Veterinary College, and recently scientists decided to try and figure out the secret of Eclipse’s greatness.  So, as scientists will, they took precise measurements of the horse’s bones and developed mathematical models of horse movement based on them.  And do you know what they discovered?  Eclipse was—average.  Just average.  Dr. Alan Wilson and his colleagues who were in charge of the study came to the questionable conclusion—well, maybe that’s precisely why he was so great, because his legs were so—well, so average—you know, not too short and not too long.  “Horsefeathers,” responded Dr. James Rooney, a professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky and an expert in equine biomechanics.  He said that any research that is based solely on the horse’s skeletal structure misses a crucial element of his success.  “There’s one thing they don’t know about this horse:  what his attitude was. . .  In fact,” Dr. Rooney said, “ some of the sorriest, worst-looking horses have been great racehorses.”  You see, as Dr. Wilson said, the brain, the metabolism, the tendons and muscles are lost to history.  All they know of Eclipse’s heart is what was written on a card at the time of his death:  “His heart, like his legend, was large.”  They just couldn’t measure that horse’s heart.

What we make of ourselves in this world has less to do with brilliance and beauty, with charm and charisma, and more to do with heart.  It has more to do with spirit.  It has to do with what we are willing and able to take in from this abundant world, and what we’re willing to give back.  When we live in a state of primal thanksgiving, we become rooted and steady, no matter what our particular circumstances may be.  Then it becomes possible for us to identify with the joy of others, instead of longing for what others seem to have, for we know that the source of blessing is infinite, that in fact at the very heart of life is a blessedness that holds us and keeps us.  We can stop living in the past or stop imagining some future nirvana and just be present with what is.  It’s tricky: another paradox—being present with what is, we can move anywhere, but if we refuse to be present in our reality, we cannot move at all.  “In all things I am content,” wrote St. Paul.  He’s speaking spiritual law here.

Let us be thankful, then, in the midst of it all: for the beauty of the these golden leaves of autumn and for the love of friends and family—but also for broken hearts and bad colds and quarrels with our children and even the bad news coming over the radio waves—let us be thankful for everything that opens the heart and challenges the spirit, for each and everything that gives us hints about the great mystery of what it means to be human and to be alive.

For that is what it’s about, you see.  It’s about being alive in the world.  As alive as we can be, all of our days.  In our very ordinary days and in our very imperfect lives, we will have countless opportunities to praise and to give thanks, to be generous and compassionate.  We will have many invitations to have clean and clear and loving relationships with others.  We will have multiple ways to bless the world.  Good pilgrims, do not turn away.  Choose life, every chance you get.  And always, always give thanks.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Beloved, we acknowledge that sometimes want pushes out thankfulness, and we retreat from life.  We get stuck in anger and cynicism, leaving room for little else.  We ask this day for a blessing: fill our reluctant hearts with thanksgiving, for the beauty of these days, for the people we love, and most of all for the miracle of being alive.  May we not turn away from the fullness of the moment, the harvest of time.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

As you leave this place, may you know yourself for who you are, and may you think kindly upon that self, and may you go from here giving thanks and blessing to the world.  Amen.