"...And What Does It Mean
To You?"
A sermon by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
September 14, 2008
READINGS ANCIENT AND MODERN:
The first reading is from Chapter 21 of the Tao Te Ching, by
Lao Tzu and translated by Dr. Ralph Alan Dale:
The Great Integrity is a paradox.
It is inherent in the universe,
yet its form is so illusive.
It is the Vital Essence of every entity,
yet nothing announces its essential character.
The Great Integrity was apparent
before time, space and matter appeared to separate.
How can we re-mind and re-infuse ourselves
with this very touchstone of all essentialities and connections?
By refusing time, space and matter
with the spiritualization of our materiality,
and with the materialization of our spirituality.
Our second reading is from Who Is Man? by the preeminent 20th
Century Jewish theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel:
Over and above personal problems, there is an objective challenge
to overcome inequity, injustice, helplessness, suffering, carelessness,
oppression. Over and above the din of desires there is a calling,
a demanding, a waiting, an expectation. There is a question that
follows me wherever I turn. What is expected of me? What is demanded
of me?
What we encounter is not only flowers and stars, mountains and
walls. Over and above all things is a sublime expectation, a waiting
for. With every child born a new expectation enters the world.
This is the most important experience in the life of every human
being: something is asked of me. Every human being has had a moment
in which he sensed a mysterious waiting for him. Meaning is found
in responding to the demand, meaning is found in sensing the demand.
SERMON:
Anais Nin once wrote: "Life is a process of becoming,
a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail
is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind
of death."
Many of you know that last month I had the great opportunity to
travel in Romania, especially in the province of Transylvania, where
Unitarianism was born 440 years ago. In fact, I was invited to bring
greetings on behalf of the Unitarian Universalists of the United
States to the 4,000 people assembled there for the World Gathering
of Unitarians, celebrating the 440th anniversary. It was a pretty
incredible experience. I'll talk about that particular event more
on September 28th, when I intend to focus on many of the wonderful
experiences that were part of that pilgrimage. I'll be joined that
morning by a number of the other pilgrims from Summit UU, with whom
I traveled and got to sing in their touring UU choir. I suspect
that like this morning, there will be a number of other sermons,
along the way, when I draw upon experiences from that trip.
So, a little bit of background to give you some context for the
experience I wanted to share with you this morning. There were 20
of us pilgrims traveling on this tour. We were met at the airport
in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, by our guides, Robbie and Kate
Balent. Robbie and Kate, who are brother and sister, are two of
the most delightful people I've ever had the opportunity to spend
two weeks with. Robbie, a 32-year old Unitarian minister, and I
formed a quick and friendly, collegial relationship.
After two nights in Bucharest, we traveled by bus, which was our
"home on the road" to the Transylvanian town of Barot.
The Unitarian Church in Barot is the Partner Church of the Summit,
NJ UU congregation. We stayed in Barot for four nights and so we
got to know folks there pretty well. The minister there, Alpar Kiss
is quite a character. Age wise, he is a contemporary of mine.
The story I want to share with you now, is about a conversation
that Robbie, Alpar and I had late one evening while sitting at an
outside table at the only restaurant/bar in Barot. We were enjoying
a couple of Ciuc beers together, but the conversation among the
three colleagues sitting at the table was a rather serious one.
The day before, a fatal accident had occurred in Barot. An inebriated,
older man, riding a bicycle erratically, darted out onto the roadway
where he was struck and killed by a young man driving a small pick-up
truck. The motorist was a member of Alpar's congregation. The bicyclist
was an estranged of the congregation.
The young man was quickly cleared by the police of any wrongdoing.
But if you or anyone you know has ever been involved in a similar
mishap, you know that this is a very difficult experience to come
to terms with. The young man and his family were quite devastated
by the death and the part that the young man had played in it. Alpar
had considerable counseling to do with the young man and his family.
The even greater challenge for him though, was working with the
family of the deceased man. The man didn't just happen to be inebriated
on the afternoon of the accident. It seems that he had been inebriated
for about the past 15 years. His former wife would have nothing
to do with him, nor with the funeral proceedings. His three children
wanted only that the service be, "… as brief as possible."
So the conversation, as Alpar, Robbie and sat out in the beautiful,
Transylvanian mountain summer air that night, was about what Alpar
might say at the funeral service the next day. What things needed
to be said? What things would be appropriate to address? How could
the ceremony be made meaningful for family members who thought they
wanted only brevity?
Our conversation was an interesting and meaningful exploration
into religious, cultural and personal differences in our approaches
to ministry. Alpar felt that he could not address the man's drunkenness,
his total abdication of personal responsibility and the utterly
failed relationships that had surrounded his life and now his death.
But what would he say?
I understand something of the religious differences between ourselves
and our Unitarian brothers and sisters in Transylvania. While we
have very similar theologies about the unity of all things, the
expressions of those theologies often differ, especially in the
use of biblical underpinnings which continue to be near the center
of our religious partners' religious expression.
I wondered aloud if it might be useful to select one of the biblical
texts about wandering in the wilderness. "The wilderness really
can be such a treacherous place," I said. "And when we
get lost there, some of us struggle greatly to ever find our way
back. I wonder if that might be helpful to his children as they
struggle to fit their father's life into the context of his own
humanity."
Alpar thought this might be a good approach, for about a minute.
Then he said, "I don't think I could ever say anything that
might be taken as the slightest bit derogatory about their dead
father. I have to find only positive things to say." My own
feeling was that those difficult issues, which were so evident in
the man's life, needn't be dealt with directly by name, but that
there was a ministry needed by the survivors that would go unaddressed
if there wasn't some way for them to connect with their experience
of the many years of pain that their father's life had inflicted
on them.
This was not a totally new set of issues for me. When my oldest
brother died at an age younger than I am now, 14 years ago, it was
much the result of some very fast, very hard living that had caught
up with him in short order. When he died, he had several diseases
and conditions that were the result of his lifestyle. Similar to
the man in Barot, my brother had abandoned his wife of many years
and their five children, some of whom were still teenagers at home
when he left. A difference was that there had been, in the last
couple of years of my brother's life, some attempts to be in relationship
with at least some of his children. These attempts had met with
some success. When I arrived in Texas after his death to be with
his family, and with my sisters and other brother, there was still
much more of an experience of grief in our gathering that was about
his life than there was about his death.
I met the minister who was going to do my brother's funeral. He
was the pastor of a Religious Science congregation that my brother
had found his way to in his last couple of years. I was glad to
learn he had. I'm sure the connections there were vitally important
to him. He had made some very good friends including Jim, who was
the pastor. Jim extended the professional courtesy to me of inviting
me to speak at the ceremony. I declined and said that I would just
do a reading instead. I changed my mind during the service.
If I hadn't known my brother, and had just happened to walk into
the funeral, I'd have thought they were celebrating the life of
some saint, like Mother Teresa. The praise, while it was heartfelt
and intended to provide relief, didn't tell the whole story. As
I looked at the pain on the faces of my nieces and nephews and their
mother, pain caused by, not only the denial of the experience, but
the denial of the experience of a very different reality, I knew
that I needed to say something. And so I did.
When I stood to do my reading, I said that I wanted to share a
few words. I was able to acknowledge that sometimes we cause pain
in one another's lives and, that for many of us, that pain is often
reserved for those whom we love the most. I was able to acknowledge
that sometimes we make difficult decisions, and that, whether they
are good decisions or bad ones, the way we carry them out might
not always be the best way that we could do things. I was able to
acknowledge that human life, while we are alive, is filled with
infinite potential, but that in death our lives become very, very
finite. And I was able to acknowledge that carrying bitterness in
our hearts is a punishment that we inflict upon ourselves and that
there are times when forgiveness, both of ourselves and others,
is a gift that we sometimes need to allow ourselves in order to
go on living the best and the most meaningful lives, capable of
joy.
I could see that this message, this litany of acknowledgement at
my brother's funeral, made a difference to his family and I was
grateful, very grateful, that I could be there with them for it.
…every human being does have moments in which we sense a mysterious
expectation of us. Meaning is found in sensing and responding to
the call of such expectations.
So, I shared all these thoughts with Alpar and Robbie that night
in Barot. I sensed that Robbie understood what I was saying. Alpar
said, "I think we're dealing with cultural differences here.
I could never say such things in a funeral."
"It's your funeral service," I said. "You'll need
to say what in your heart extends the ministry that you find needed.
You don't owe me anything," I assured him. Robbie said that
he had done a funeral the year before for a man in his congregation
whose story was similar and that he could email the service to Alpar
that same night. Our conversation drew to a close and we all walked
to the homes where we would be staying the night
The next morning, Robbie and I and the Summit group got on our
bus and traveled to a nearby town for the day to visit another Unitarian
church. When we returned to Barot that night, we three ministers
were able to get together again for just a few minutes. Alpar thanked
us for the conversation of the night before. And he reported that
he'd been able to use much of Robbie's service in helping him to
prepare his own. He said that the service had gone very well and
that the family seemed quite pleased, considering the difficult
circumstances. "I'm sure they were," I said.
I don't know the Transylvanian culture or the ways in which the
Romanian people experience, express or process grief. And I surely
trust that Alpar has a far better understanding of those dynamics
and his people than I do. I imagine it was the right service for
the right time. Still, I came away from the experience with at least
a couple of questions - for myself and for us.
First, what would you want said, at your funeral or memorial service,
about your life? Would you want the minister and the loved ones
gathered to celebrate the life of a saint? Even if that saint didn't
happen to be you? Would you want them to leave open the possibility
that you struggled in your life, struggled in finding your way to
intentional and meaningful living…and that they were able to
love you through your struggles? If you are a difficult person to
be around, and you know that, how would you want or expect your
loved ones to deal with your curmudgeondry? Would you hope your
loved ones might find meaning in the difficulty you caused them?
And would you want them to find forgiveness?
And then turning these same questions all around, what would you
want to express at the funeral of a loved one?
And, whether or not we are able to successfully answer any of these
questions, how does the certainty of our eventual death inform us
about the way we live our lives now? There are so many treacherous
patches of wilderness that could lay waste to our lies: busyness,
drugs, alcohol, television, entertainment, all forms of addiction,
even forms of things that sometimes on the surface appear to be
quite benign. How can we regain our bearings when we've lost them?
How do we pull ourselves back into intentional, meaningful living
when we find ourselves lost in the wilderness? Most of us don't
find ourselves quite so lost as I imagine this fellow in Barot did,
but still, if we aren't paying attention, really paying attention
to our lives and to the world around us, isn't that a way of being
lost as well?
I don't know that there are many answers to these questions that
are for sure. I do know that there are some helpful guides along
the way.
"Life is just a chance to grow a soul." -A. Powell Davies
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."
--Annie Dillard
"Religion is the human response to being alive and having to
die." --F. Forrester Church
"How can we re-mind and re-infuse ourselves with the very
touchstone of all essentialities and connections in the universe
and in our lives? (Perhaps) By re-infusing time, space and matter
with the spiritualization of our materiality, and with the materialization
of our spirituality." -Lao Tzu
And how can we do that? How can we spiritualize our materiality
and materialize our spirituality? Maybe we can learn from others
who have found ways through the confusion and the jumble. Abraham
Joshua Heschel was one who spoke of a way:
"Over and above personal problems, there is an objective challenge
to overcome inequity, injustice, helplessness, suffering, carelessness,
oppression. Over and above the din of desires there is a calling,
a demanding, a waiting, an expectation. There is a question that
follows [us] wherever [we] turn. What is expected of me? What is
demanded of me?
What we encounter is not only flowers and stars, mountains and
walls. Over and above all things is a sublime expectation, a waiting
for. With every child born a new expectation enters the world.
This is the most important experience in the life of every human
being: something is asked of [each of us]. Every human being has
[moments] in which we sense a mysterious waiting for [us]. Meaning
is found in responding to the demand, meaning if found in sensing
the demand."
We grow our souls when we answer the demand. Day by day, we add
to the life of meaning. Because none of us is going to get out of
this alive, we are here together in our religious community, not
so intent on the righteousness or even the rightness of our answers,
but to learn together to live within the ambiguity of the questions.
Bob Dylan wrote, "Any day now, any way now, I shall be released."
Anais Nin wrote: "Life is a process of becoming, a combination
of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they
wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."
None of us is going to get out of this alive. So tell me, when
all is said and done, what does it mean to you? What does your very
life mean to you? What will it have meant to you? Now is our time
for the growing of our souls. Now is the time of our becoming.
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