Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, May 29, 2022.
Tomorrow is Memorial Day, the day our nation sets aside for remembering and honoring those who have died serving in our military. It used to be called Decoration Day, because people would go out and decorate their graves with flags and flowers. Some of you have told me of your own Memorial Day rituals, where you go out to the graves of your loved ones, whether they died serving in the armed forces or not, and tidy up, and plant flowers, and spend some time on that hallowed ground.
I love gathering with a family around a grave. It feels good to be out under the sky, in touch with the earth, in a place that’s often beautiful, where if you listen, you can hear the wind blowing through the trees, and the birds singing. John O’Donohue wrote a blessing about this, and I often say it when gathered with folks around a grave. Will you try to imagine a gravesite that you know, while we hear it now?:
May perpetual light shine upon
The faces of all who rest here.
May the lives they lived
Unfold further in spirit.
May all their past travail
Find ease in the kindness of the clay.
May the remembering earth
Mind every memory they brought.
May the rain from the heavens
Fall gently upon them.
May the wildflowers and grasses
Whisper their wishes into light.
May we reverence the village of presence
In the stillness of this silent field.
As you know, on Tuesday, in Uvalde, Texas, a young man entered a school and shot and killed 19 children and 2 teachers. What is wrong with our country? What is so broken or so sick in our society that we have this problem with gun violence that no other nation seems to have? And how do we live with news like this, that comes too often? How do we live in such a broken world, and in such a beautiful world too? Especially at this time of year, when there seems to be new life everywhere? How do we hold this beauty, and this brokenness?
If you’re hoping I have the answer to that question, if you think there is some secret to fixing things, some way of not being heartbroken by both the tragedy and the beauty of this life, then I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you today.
Yes, we need to do everything we can to work against gun violence. Yes, we need to elect leaders who will not be owned by the gun lobby. Yes, we need to address the amount of trauma and abuse in our society that can lead young men to commit such desperate and terrible acts. But those are huge projects that are going to take time, that are going to require us to change our culture that is too comfortable with violence and death, that is too resigned to these atrocities. So please do what you can—speak up, show up, write letters, give money.
But what about your heart? What about your soul? How are you going to live in this world of so much brokenness and so much beauty? This is a spiritual question—not a problem to be solved, but a way of life to be cultivated. We need ways to live that help us to be openhearted and courageous, that help us to know how to find peace and solace in the midst of strife and heartbreak. Not so we can float above it, but so we can be present to it, and make our way courageously and gracefully through it. In the hurt and messiness of life, to still be able also to see its beauty and possibility.
Words from the poet Adrienne Rich come to mind, words that are in the back of our hymnal, #463:
My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.
Lately I’ve been moved by the acts of kindness and care I see around me, the little ways people are making a difference, helping to spread goodness and peace by simple acts of care and devotion. It’s one of the gifts of being your minister, that I get to bear witness to some of this—and like you, I don’t get to see it all. There are folks in our midst quietly making calls and writing letters and taking food and offering rides, reaching out to people, saying, “I see you. Are you okay? How can I help?”
Today I want to lift up the humble and beautiful vocation of caring and caretaking. Being someone who takes care. It could be how you move through the world, or it could be taking care of a building, or some important papers, or something else. Like Peter Cameron, whose memorial service is tomorrow, quietly cared for our church historical records and documents for many years, with diligence and devotion. It’s often people who need caring for, and this isn’t always easy. Some people don’t like being helped! Some people are hard to help!
I’m not thinking of a caretaker in a possessive or oppressive way, but rather, in in a loving, liberating way. One who asks, “What can I do to make things better? What is needed, and what do I have to offer? How can I help?”
This spring I’m loving taking care of some plants in our yard, trying to help them to grow and thrive. There’s such joy in this simple work. And there’s solace too. One of you wrote this to me in an email the other day: “Hope you have had a chance to enjoy the weather the last couple of days--good to get outside with so much sadness going on in the world.” Amen to that. It’s good, it’s necessary, to have things that bring you solace and peace and joy. And I hope you know what those are, and that you’re putting yourself in those placess of grace and goodness.
The poem that was our reading this morning so beautifully expresses what I want to say to you today, and how grateful I am for the ways that you are like what Julia Kasdorf describes. So let’s hear it again, her poem, “What I Learned From My Mother”:
I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn't know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another's suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
At St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, whose dome is a landmark on that city’s skyline, and which miraculously survived German bombs during the blitz, there is a stone plaque quoting its architect, Sir Christopher Wren. It’s in Latin, and reads, Si monumentum requiris circumspice. “If you would seek my monument, look around you.”
We put stone monuments in cemeteries to honor and remember our beloved dead. And it is good and right to do so. But aren’t the real monuments to how we have lived the acts of care and devotion we have offered, the lives we have touched? In the moment these acts can seem so intangible and fleeting, but if you asked the people who received them, you would hear that your offerings of love and care are remembered and cherished, as solid as any stone. What anyone will remember is that we came.
What if we imagine our days and our lives as opportunities to be making these memorials to love and devotion? What if we could see our showing up, our caring, as acts of creating peace and goodness? One small act a a time. Isn’t this a way that we can be part of changing our culture? We often can’t control the big picture, and the big problems can seem so daunting. But was can make a real difference in the lives of those around us, in our families and workplaces and communities.
There’s a hymn we sing, and the name of its tune is “Creation of Peace.” I love this—it invites us to remember that peace is something that can be created. And it can also be destroyed. We have the power to heal and to harm, to bless and to curse.
How about we set ourselves at creating peace, at making memorials to goodness, taking care, as we are able? And taking care of our selves too, of course.
Isn’t this how we will build a land with more justice and more peace? Isn’t this how we start to heal our selves and our world? It’s a big project, and it won’t be finished in our lifetimes, but we can each do our part. And together, who knows what we might accomplish? How we might help to renew some parts of this good earth.
So take heart, my friends. Yes, there is so much that is broken. And there is so much good we can do! There are so many ways we can help! Let us embrace the humble and simple acts of care-taking that call to us; let us find solace and even delight in being of use, in healing and blessing what we can, while we are here.
Amen.