Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, November 14, 2021
In her beautiful sermon last Sunday, Tori said something that got my attention. Talking about the slow process of coming out of COVID, she said, “I have grown a bit weary from hoping alone. Hoping things will get better. Hoping our recovery will hold. Hoping our world starts to find solutions to the larger social problems we face. This hope, at times, has been hard to access and sometimes feels too light a response.”
I have to confess that lately I’ve been feeling some weariness too. Because this pandemic journey we have been on, some days it feels endless, and some days it has felt like traveling without a map. Or with a GPS that needs its software updated. Things have changed, the way forward is unclear, and I kind of like knowing where I’m going! Don’t you?
But these times are asking us to find new ways, and draw new maps. And the question is, what kind of heart are we going to bring to this new reality, how will we approach the living of these days?
I have to confess that, lately, I’ve brought more wariness and weariness than I have courage and resolve. I’ve held back, hoping that things would get better, easier. But like Tori said, that hope is starting to feel like too weak a response.
One of my happy places is out in the Rocky Mountain West, specifically Yellowstone National Park, where I love to hike and fly fish. I’ve discovered that I love hiking to a remote river almost as much as the fishing itself. The anticipation can be so sweet.
Out there, the happiest part of my day is often before I head out. Sitting with that first cup of coffee, wondering “Where will I go today?” Imagining the rivers I could walk to, wondering if the trout will be rising there. Maybe I should try that section of a river I’ve never seen, but that another angler suggested that I check out? The day is new and it’s all possibility, it’s anticipation and excitement. I love packing my gear and heading out. Who knows what will happen? It’s an adventure, and I love it. It makes me feel so alive! I hope you have things in your life that help you to come alive, and that you are making time for those things
The question is, why haven't I brought more of that spirit of adventure to this pandemic pilgrimage we’ve been on? Yes, it’s way more serious than fishing—there’s been so much suffering and loss and hardship over the past twenty months. It’s been a lot for everyone, especially for parents and children and teachers, for healthcare and other frontline workers. But I’m starting to sense that I, that we, need a better way out of the sadness and hardship than just plodding through, hoping things will get better. I’m sensing, in these days, a new invitation.
Many of you know church member Abbe Wertz. She’s an emergency room nurse, and a manager at Lawrence General Hospital; she’s a frontline healthcare worker, and she’s been going through a lot of things over the last couple of years. Some time ago, Abbe told me that she’d come up two words that have become like a mantra for her, and these two words have been a real help to her. And Abbe’s two words are “Look up.” She’s made this her practice: to make time to intentionally look up, to slow down and breathe, to remember what it is that’s saving her, in these days, and make time for that.
What do you need to tell yourself? What do you need to hear? Right now I’m sensing this invitation, this call to bring more of a sense of imagination and adventure to what lies ahead. To have less dread and more resolve, more exploration and experimentation, and less worry about what could go wrong. Some of the old maps, that may have served us well in the the past, they are outdated now. And if we try to use them to find our way back to how things used to be, I’m afraid we will really get lost. What if we acknowledge that we’re in new territory, and there’s not a clear map or path for how to get from where we are to where we need to be? That we’ve arrived at the trailhead, we have what we need to move forward; that we’re not lost—we’re just starting to find a new way!
Rabbi Edwin Friedman was a wise man who wrote a book about family systems in congregations that is required reading in many seminaries. He came to believe that many of our problems these days are because of a failure of nerve. Friedman lifts up Christopher Columbus as an example of what’s missing in our culture these days. Maybe not the most politically correct hero for these days, but Friedman makes a powerful point. He says that medieval Europe was suffering under centuries of imaginative malaise until Columbus and other explorers literally sailed off the map; that it was their adventuring and exploration that ushered in a new spirit of imagination that fueled the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the modern era.
Who knows what could happen when you sail off the map, or when you take a turn down a road you’ve never traveled? You might get lost; or get in trouble. You’ve seen those old maps, that put warnings at the edges of the known world, saying, “There be dragons!”
One summer I was out in Yellowstone kind of early, and there had been so much snow that winter that my favorite rivers were unfishable. I was disappointed, to say the least. But this forced me to try other waters I’d never explored. And other anglers suggested places I’d never been. And it was wonderful!
On this COVID journey we’ve had to be careful and cautious, and we need to continue to be vigilant and wise. But don’t we also need to find ways to bring a spirit of adventurous to our days? To imagine a better today, an even brighter tomorrow; to point ourselves in that direction and start working toward it? I love Bobby Kennedy’s words at the top of the order of service today:
“Some people see things as they are and say, ‘Why?'
I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?’”
When you go off the map, you do run the risk of getting lost. But that’s okay, isn’t it? Because sometimes, when you’re led to places you didn’t plan to go, and you end up finding unexpected blessings there! This is something poets and other visionaries seem to know intuitively, and know how to practice. And people of faith, like us —don’t we know something about getting lost, and being found? About stepping out in faith, trusting that we will be held and companioned, that come what may, all shall be well?
Thank God for the poets and prophets, for our teachers and guides. Who remind us that, on this great journey called life, it doesn’t help to hurry or panic. Especially when you feel lost. No, especially then, the invitation is to slow down, to stop even. To look up, and around. To breathe. As David Wagoner writes:
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven,
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
I hope that our weekly gathering for worship is this kind of touchstone for you. And the other ways we gather for worship and community: meditation, vespers, chalice circles, reflections, any of the ways you find nourishment for your soul. The invitation, and the necessity, in these days, is to remember that you are not alone. That we are part of a great and abiding Love. That even with the disruption and change and uncertainty around us, not everything is lost. As John Greenleaf Whittier wrote,
The letter fails, the systems fall, and every symbol wanes;
the Spirit overseeing all, Eternal Love, remains.
May this be our faith too, in these days. Let us be grateful, and let us be glad, for the gift of this day, and these companions; for what lies just around the corner, just off the map, just waiting for us, to imagine and discover.
Amen.
