The recognition of our graduating seniors earlier in the service is a reminder of the season we’re in. For the students it is recognizing a very important rite of passage, from one chapter to another. And those passages involve parents and teachers and siblings as they too, mark the shift from one place to another. It is a rite of passage of us as a church community.

And part of what we do to recognize those passages is that we have ceremonies and we try to make meaning of the time. Part of that meaning is made through the words that are spoken to graduates from commencement speakers. Many of them will try to offer up a vision of what the world might be and the role those graduates might play in that world.

Now the truth is that many of those speeches can be pretty forgettable. The speaker at my college commencement was C. Everett Koop, the surgeon general in the Reagan administration. Now I’m sure he offered a fine talk but honestly I can’t remember anything he talked about. Now I will grant you that it has been a few years. But when I think back to that time I recall being focused on saying goodbye to my friends and getting a job. Maybe I just wasn’t in a place to hear his visionary words that day.

Our spiritual theme this month is Vision and often when I think of that word it is something that comes from someone or from someplace else. It makes me think of things like commencement speeches, that point us towards our aspirations, what we hope the world might be. Words that might speak to us and inspire us.

And I expect many of us can call to mind such words and famous speakers who have inspired us and helped to point us in a certain direction. Think about John F. Kennedy’s call to ask not what our country can do for us but for what we can do for our country. Think about Martin Luther King’s dream of beloved community where all God’s children have a seat at the table. Such visions can have tremendous power.

When I look at our current times, more often than not I can’t point to such inspiration from our leaders. There are just too many times in the course of a week when I find myself asking… so how can this be? It is easy to find myself heading down that path of cynicism and despair about where the world is going.  It is in that moment that I recognize how much a vision is needed. It is part of what helps us find our way in life.

I wonder if all too often it is easy to want to look to our leaders for such inspiration. We want them to make it for us. It may be that in times where it feels there is a void of vision, I wonder if that calls us inward, to explore the depths, to look to what we see around us.

The anthem today, that familiar hymn, is a kind of calling for a vision that might hold us and inspire us. Be thou my vision, O God of my heart. Naught be all else to me, save that thou art. Thou my best thought, by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.

I hear in those words a wish for vision to come from that source that holds us and guides us, that some might call God. Thou my best thought, thy presence my light. Those words are a reminder for me that we are not alone in that quest for vision and that we are very much a part of the equation. Sometimes we may need to recognize our role.

A  parable as told by writer Megan McKenna[1]:

There was a woman who wanted peace in the world and peace in her heart. She wanted all sorts of good things, but she was very frustrated. The world seemed to be falling apart. She would read the news and get depressed. One day she decided to go shopping, and she went in a mall and picked a store at random. She walked in and was surprised to see Jesus behind the counter. She knew it was Jesus, because he looked just like the pictures she’s seen on holy cards and devotional pictures. She looked again and again at him, and finally she got up her nerve and asked, “Excuse me, are you Jesus?” “I am.” “Do you work here?” “No,” Jesus said, “I own the store.” “Oh, so what do you sell here?” “Oh, just about anything,” “Anything?” “Yeah, anything you want. What is it that you want?” She said, “I don’t know.” “Well,” Jesus said, “feel free, walk up and down the aisles, make a list, see what it is you want, and then come back and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

She did just that, walked up and down the aisles. There was peace on earth, no more war, no hunger or poverty, peace in families, no more drugs, harmony, clear air, careful use of resources. She wrote furiously. By the time she got back to the counter, she had a long list. Jesus took the list, skimmed through it, looked up at her and smiled. “No problem.” And then he bent down behind the counter and picked out all sorts of things, stood up, and laid out some packets. She asked, “What are these?” Jesus replied, “Seed packets. This is a catalog store.” She said, “You mean I don’t get the finished product?” “No, this is a place of dreams. You come and see what it looks like, and I give you the seeds. You plant the seeds. You go home and nurture them and help them to grow and someone else reaps the benefits.” “Oh,” she said. And she left the store without buying anything.”

So what about you? Would you have left the store or would you have purchased the seeds?

The spiritual task asks us to take the stuff of our lives and to make meaning. We take our fears, our disappointments, we take our grief and our joy and we bring it all into the mix. And part of the task is to find those seeds, those moments when we can say “yes,” and to plant those seeds in fertile ground. But is our prepackaged, ready-made world do we sometimes miss the seeds that are there before us?

The spiritual task to be present with what is around us and to bear witness to what we see. And when we do look around, there is plenty to see. An example that is guiding these days comes from the students at Parkland High School in Florida, the sight of yet another school shooting back in March.

When it happened I found myself responding with what felt like a familiar set of emotions: sadness, anger, frustration. I felt a familiar kind of resignation that nothing would happen in the aftermath of this shooting. But then something seemed to be different this time. It was the students who were speaking and they were speaking clearly. We will not just accept the status quo that of all the guns in our country. We will not just accept the status quo that doesn’t do anything about such events.

Their leadership has been an inspiration to me. Even as so many people have tried to tear them down, with fear mongering online, with so much that would distort their message. Despite so much they have managed to keep their voices out there. They have managed to keep their message focused and strong. They have managed to offer up a vision of how things might be different.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with all this. I know those young people face an uphill struggle. And yet somehow it feels like a different struggle. Somehow it feels like there may have been at least a little turn in this conversation.

“Without a vision,” the scripture tells us in the Book of Proverbs, “the people will perish.”

That vision may not always come in ways that we expect. It may not come in some finished form but in the form of a seed packet, as the parable we heard earlier tells us. But part of the spiritual task is to pay attention to what is around us. It is to see our part of what is unfolding.

I think those who are offering some of the most compelling visions for our times are coming from places we may not have noticed before. I think of the students in Florida and I think of the voices of the #MeToo movement or the Black Lives Matter movement. Those are the voices that I find are calling us these days, the voices that help to point us in a direction. They are movements that take the lived experiences of oppression and say no…and then eventually help us to get to that place of yes—yes to how the world might be.

And some of these movements are asking us to see leadership in different ways.

And it may be a need to live with some humility about our place in the process. For those of us who are older it might mean making space to hear from those who are younger.

For those of us who are white it might be making space to hear and learn from people of color.

For those of us who are able bodied, it might mean making space to hear from those who are not.

For those of us who are privileged it might be a recognition of that privilege and a recognition of what we have gained at the expense of others.

For those of us who are used to being leaders it might be to recognize the value, sometimes, of being followers. That isn’t always easy territory for many of us Unitarian Universalists, but that may be what the times are asking of us. To live in the disease of what we don’t know as well as what we know. To recognize our privilege and our power. To risk seeing our vulnerability too. To also see our interdependence. How we are all in this together.

Vision is something that is always in formation. We are taking the stuff of our lives and we are making meaning from that stuff. It is recognizing that vision can come from up here but it is also something that can come up through us, through our experiences and through the experiences of those around us.

It happens when we see our lives in the lives of others when we move out of that place of interconnection. It means living in that place where things aren’t always clear, but emerging. It means seeing our part in something much larger than ourselves.

For those of us privileged to have sight, there is that way that the eyes can adjust when we are in darkness. That at first seems like we can’t see anything … well we start to recognize that indeed we can see things, we can make out shapes, we can begin to recognize.

And maybe that is how it is in life as well. Maybe it takes finding ourselves in the dark, fearing that we have lost so much, maybe that is when we can see things taking shape. Maybe it means making ourselves vulnerable. Maybe it means opening ourselves to the vision that might be taking shape for each of us and our community.

Words again of Theodore Roethke:

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood —

In the echo chamber that can be our body politic, it can be hard to find a space to listen to that still small voice that calls each of us into wholenesss, into community. It can be hard and sometimes it requires us to listen very, very carefully. It asks us to pay attention to the seeds that we are being offered to us, that we might nurture them into being.

May each of us, in our listening, in our hearing, in our speaking, find our voice. And may all of us, in our living, together, find our way home. Amen.

Prayer

Spirit of life and of love. God of many names and of no name at all, hear our prayers. Be with us in our struggles, but with us in our discoveries. Be with us as with strive to live with courage, with humility, in such a way as recognized our interdependence with all of life. Most of all be with us as we find our way, as we discern the vision for where we want to be. Through it all may we know we are not alone but connected to that mystery some call love, that helps us as we live our way into the beloved community. Amen.

Benediction

As you go from this place, pay attention for the commencement address you need to hear—and the one you need to speak—this year. In your listening, and in your speaking, may you find your way.

 

[1] Megan McKenna, from “Parables,” excerpted in “Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life” by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Scribner, 1996.

 

Topics: Vision