To Live In This World, You Must Be Able To Do Three Things: A Sermon About Change
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- Created on Sunday, 13 June 2010 01:00
- Written by Gary E. Smith
“Every year,” writes Mary Oliver, “everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this… To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends upon it, and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” The poet is close to the heart of religion, close to the meaning of what brings communities like this together, close to what it is that makes our own hearts cry out. How do we love? And how do we let go?
We hear these questions on so many levels, on the level of living and dying, on the level of coming together and breaking apart, on the level of day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year change, and the discomfort, even the terror, that change sometimes brings. This is a sermon about change, here on this Sunday dozens of Sundays after our Opening Sunday last September, dozens of Sundays after this amazing institution once again moved into high gear. We are here once again on the cusp of another summer, seduced once again by the myth that the pace will slow. We will go to Maine. I will read books in the sun.
Here’s what comes to mind about change and how we resist it. I remember, as a child, standing in the surf at the ocean’s edge, standing there when the surf was particularly heavy, and I tried hard not to move. I was determined to hold my ground, and the surf just pounded away at my legs, until either I was knocked backward, or the waves washed away the sand under my feet and I had to move anyway. That’s the metaphor of the morning. In this lifetime, we are holding back the tide and the universe is laughing.
“To live in this world you must be able to do three things,” writes Mary Oliver, “to love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends upon it, and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” This “let it go” part might lead you to believe that I am talking about loss more than change, and, of course, loss is a part of change, but change is something bigger. Change is both loss and gain, but it is a subtle thing, these changes that chip away at us, chip away at us from the earliest ages. Change is a theme of our lives, and this is as good a Sunday as ever to name this, this Sunday we do not name Closing Sunday, though in September, we will have an Opening Sunday again. [By the way, thanks to all the worship leaders this summer, and thanks to the loyal remnant of the congregation that worships here all summer long.] We do not name this Closing Sunday, but we are marking something today, shall we call it an ending of some kind? Today is an ending of THIS year of the Choir, THIS year of Religious Education, THIS year of Social Action, THIS year of whatever it is that you have done here this year, THIS year of First Parish, this ending of our 374th year.
The Smiths (oh boy) are in the midst of change, moving in ten days from a place in Concord we’ve called home for twenty-two years to a new home in Belmont, upstairs, downstairs, we’re the downstairs, upstairs are daughter Hannah, and Jeff, Anita and Isaac, all of us embarking on new living in proximity, the sidewalk two feet from our front steps. And I retire next year at this time from thirty-nine years of ministry. How many sermons is that, how many meetings, how many weddings and memorial services, how many laughs and tears would that be? “To live in this world you must be able to do three things,” I say to myself these days, “to love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends upon it, and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”
You might remember the story of the commanding officer of an enormous battleship, called to the bridge late one night because a light is bearing down on them from the distance. “Whoever you are,” he radios ahead, “I suggest you bear off 10 degrees to the north.” Promptly a message comes back. “Whoever you are, I suggest you bear off 10 degrees to the south.” The commanding officer is irate. “I am an Admiral of the United States Navy, and I am ORDERING you to bear off 10 degrees to the north.” Again, a prompt response: “I am only a midshipman, but I still urge you to bear off 10 degrees to the south.” The admiral by now is furious. “Sailor, I am a battleship. I order you to bear off 10 degrees to the north.” The answer comes back. “All due respect, Sir, I am a lighthouse.”
This is a sermon about change, about the inevitability of change, about the futility of our own machinations to avoid change. We are people who are making 10-degree changes all the time, sometimes even 180-degree changes, sometimes spinning in place, through all 360 degrees. I am looking out at a congregation of people in change: marriage and divorce, health and sickness, old job and new job, moving from here to there, changing from one grade in school to another, birth and death. There are big and small changes.
In this September to June year, what have been the changes for you? Some of you have lost jobs. Some of you have found perfect new jobs. Some of you have had changes in your health and have adapted your life style to new circumstances. Some of you have lost relationships this year, broken up with someone, been divorced, lived through anger and shock and inevitability and maybe you’re on your own now. Some of you are waiting for relationships. Some of you have found new ones, and weddings have made all the difference in this year. There are new babies, new schools, graduations, children leaving home, children returning home.
The business of change is a theme all of our lives. There have been deaths this past year, lingering deaths and sudden deaths, and we survivors are left reeling from it all. Talk about change. Good news and bad news. Saying good-bye. Saying hello. Moving here. Moving there. Getting a driver’s license. Giving up a driver’s license. Moving to Newbury Court, Carleton Willard, or to distant lands. Or perhaps you’ve moved here to Concord or Acton or Carlisle this year, and you still remember there. This is a sermon about change.
Some of this litany is about sudden and abrupt change coming from the outside, thrust upon us. Some of this litany is about change we have brought upon ourselves. Sometimes change is very subtle, like that person you see in the mirror or the way things change around the dinner table, not overnight but gradually. We look at our children and wonder when they grew up. We look at our parents and wonder when they grew old. “To live in this world you must be able to do three things,” writes the poet, “to love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends upon it, and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”
Some of us are better at this business of change than others. There are moments when I would have time stand still. Ministers only preach the sermons they most need to hear, and we hope that there are some listening who have the same questions, the same fears, the same joys. But like the battleship and the lighthouse, there are some inevitabilities in this world, and my own games of denial will not change things. I have a prayer I have written for memorial services in which I say, “All things change. Life moves on. It does not stop.”
And so, we have introduced rituals into our life together here: we light candles in early November at the time of All Souls Day to remember the dead. We speak words of blessing, as we did last Sunday, to our graduating seniors. We try to note when we can those who are moving, as some of you are this summer. We dedicate our children, we have marriages to celebrate loves, we remember loved ones with memorial services, services of memory.
If all life is transient, moving ahead, not staying the same, then what is permanent? Is there a permanent? We Unitarian Universalists have to work harder than most on this question. If we were Jewish, we would have the covenant, this relationship with the God of our fathers and mothers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of Sarah and Leah and Ruth. If we were Christian, we would have the risen Christ, an amazing faith that puts our whole lives in the hands of a Savior. And I could lift up any number of the world’s faiths and try to answer that question, “what is permanent?” But those answers are not for me. I like what A. Powell Davies said once. “Life,” he said, “is just a chance to grow a soul.”
Bruce Southworth found that line and wrote, “Those words affirm that the world, despite all the changes we see – aging, death, seasons of nature, weather, the acts of women and men, both good and evil – despite all the changes we are subject to, there is something trustworthy at work in the world. In human relationships, we might call it Love. Among groups, we might call it Justice. In nature, we might call it Evolution. Within our skins, our minds, our hearts, we might call it growing a soul. Whatever level, from molecules to galaxies, this process of greater complexity, new connections, and added meaning, is trustworthy. This Life Force,” he says, is “a process of Growth, of Love, and of Justice.”
What is the transient and what is the permanent in your life? How would you describe your faith? What is that you hold onto when life takes you for some wild ride, some wild ride in the days and the nights, the dreams and the waking dreams, into and out of the wilderness, this joyous and awesome thing we call life. What leads us to praise? What leads us to fall down upon our knees? These are questions for a place like this. We have spent Sunday after Sunday here this year, bringing our own conditions, our laughter, our tears, our wonder, our certainties, our doubts, our hope, our anger, our joys. It’s all here. It’s all here, right now. It is what makes us a people. It is what makes us a community. It is the promise we make to each other, that we will somehow be there for each other.
Here’s what I believe, and I have seen it this year. When all else is taken, I believe, there will be a hand waiting for us. “This time is difficult,” write Pablo Neruda. “This time is difficult. Wait for me. We will live it out vividly. Give me your small hand: we will rise and suffer, we will feel, we will rejoice. So let our difficult time stand up to infinity with four hands and four eyes.” Here’s what I believe. We are not alone. Hands means not two hands of mine but four hands of ours, not two eyes of yours, but four eyes of ours, touching, seeing, understanding and comforting.
This is what endures, growing my soul, with your help, growing your soul, with my help. This has been a sermon about change, about recognizing change, about learning to embrace change, about naming what is change in this life and what is permanent. “To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends upon it, and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” This is my wish for you along with a wish for the most restorative of summers.
In Blackwater Woods,” by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars
of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,
the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders
of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now.
Every year everything I have ever learned
in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation,whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world
you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it
against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.