Welcome
Prelude
Opening words:
President of our Unitarian Universalist Association, Peter Morales, says that religion is much more about what we love than about what we think. The questions we ask each other are so critically important. If we ask each other what we believe, we will then get to talking about very heady stuff when we ask each other what we truly love, what we truly value, what we care about more than anything else in life, something amazing happens. We don't argue. We listen. We connect¦.We realize we are all in this life together (The ˜it' church, UU World, Spring 2010)
Unison words
Not for Children Only
Song #18 What Wondrous Love
Meditation
Joys and Sorrows
Offering
Otherwise by Jane Kenyon
I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birchwood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise.
Jane Kenyon is talking about change here. She speaks from her own experience of depression and illness. Everything is going along fine and then it is not. Or nothing seems to go right, and then it does. We look up and life is otherwise. We are otherwise.
We here in this congregation are in an otherwise place. Soon another minister will come to Kingston. After today I will lead only three more Sunday services. Soon I will serve as a chaplain resident in a hospital. Life brings us to a fork in the road and everything becomes otherwise. And even though we know, and continually experience, the changing nature of life, when it comes upon us it feels like a surprise. Which leads, I think, to an important question. When life becomes otherwise, can we allow ourselves to remain open to the surprise?
I do not know anyone who is able to take change completely in stride. There are so many complex feelings and behaviors associated with it. It is unsettling; it pulls us out of our haven of security and presents us with something different, even if we went looking for something different. It takes away our illusion that we can predict the future, it takes away our illusion of control. It means we lose that which we have known. Whether we hated the status quo or loved it, whether we were comfortable with it or not, change is often deeply frightening and anxiety producing. Maybe we're not up to it; maybe we can't handle it.. Change brings us loss just as often as it brings us gain. It's a big deal. So how in the world can we remain open to it?
Some of us deny that change ever took place, or we cope with it by ignoring it. We seem to forget that our children are grown up adults and insist upon telling them how to live their lives. Or we do not acknowledge that pain we've been feeling for weeks now. Or we deny that our partners are substance abusers or workaholics, despite clear evidence to the contrary. We just don't want to face that something is different for us, something is otherwise; that we are called upon to respond to situations that may be totally new, requiring resources that we aren't even sure we have. So we retreat into silence, into an attitude of "business as usual." There's a cost, though. For change is here, whether we want it to be or not.
Others of us do not deny the presence of change, we fight against it instead. We fight against it's uncertainty. Anger is often our first response. We resent having to accommodate to anything different. We fear what we might lose. We can't imagine that change could bring about an improvement, therefore we conclude that it will always be for the worse. Sometimes we become depressed. Or change brings us great grief. Or we feel overwhelmed, not up to the challenges of accommodating to change. We can hinder the efforts of change with procrastination, or an excessive reverence for and idealization of the past and the way things were. "We can't do that, we've never done it that way before." Remember the good old days? Why we can't we just stay the way we were? We hide the fear that we will lose ourselves, or our place, or those dear to us, with hostility and stubbornness. Sometimes we are resistant to change and we're not even sure why. This is why I don't eat Brussels Sprouts. They smelled bad to me as a kid and I decided I didn't like them. Don't ask me to try them now.
Or maybe we seek to mitigate change by controlling everyone and everything in our path. By over-organizing, micro-managing, by being just plain bossy. If I can direct what will happen, and when, I can control change. And if that doesn't work, I can always turn around and blame myself for the changes that did occur. Because if I can figure out what I did wrong, I can avoid it next time and so control change. If only I had said or done something differently, this wouldn't have happened. If only I had been there, she wouldn't have gotten so sick. If only, if only. This is illusion. We can neither block change nor control it all of the time. For change will come, whether we want it to or not, and it is often more powerful than we are.
"When the British colonized India they also indulged themselves in building golf courses. Apparently the golf course in Calcutta was built near a monkey habitat, and that location created a problem the builders had not foreseen. The monkeys took to the game of golf, as they understood it, and thoroughly relished chasing the little white balls. Once in possession of the ball, they seemed to enjoy throwing it somewhere else. The keepers of the golf course tried fencing the monkeys out, but no fence ever built could hold them. The golfers finally found they had no other choice but to include the monkeys in new rules of the game. The new rule was, if a monkey picked up your ball, you must play the ball where the monkey finally dropped it. This could work several ways. You might hit a drive screaming straight down the fairway only to have a monkey toss it into the rough. But it was equally possible that you might slice the ball onto the wrong fairway only to have a monkey retrieve it and place it on the proper green." (Gregory Knox Jones, Play the Ball Where the Monkey Drops It). The state of otherwise requires us to play the ball where the monkey dropped it.
It's a way to deal with change: play the ball where the monkey drops it. For this we practice flexibility, patience, letting go, and a sense of humor. We practice looking within to familiarize ourselves with our own interiors. What's in there? Do we feel afraid? Sad? Anxious? Angry? Anticipating? Eager? Free? We practice being with the moment rather than fighting against it, or wishing it was otherwise. All of these practices help to mitigate the fear, the anger, the anxiety that change brings up for us. For myself, I call upon patience, or flexibility, or humor when I feel myself tightening up. I remind myself that I have already lived through times of uncertainty, why wouldn't I come through this one? When I find myself holding my breath, it's a sign that I'm feeling some anxiety. So I make myself breathe, and let go, and I become more calm and more open.
Change is hard, yes. It can bring loss, it can bring sorrow, yes. It can also bring opportunities for growth, for learning, for happiness, if we can allow ourselves to find the possibilities it presents. Change per se is neither good nor bad; it's what we make of it. Why not attempt to make meaning of it, to find a greater purpose through it? Why not meet it with the bravery that I know is inside us? Gandhi said, "As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world . . . as in being able to remake ourselves." To meet the otherwise.
One of the most difficult aspects of change is that it often asks us to give up something that we wanted. Gilda Radner, the Saturday Night Live comedienne who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, said I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it.
Almost thirty years ago now, I had a dream. I wanted to adopt a child. It was an important decision for me to make and I had to speak aloud that longing inside myself before I could do anything about it. Knowing what we want is a useful motivator. So, knowing what I wanted, I went to an adoption agency. There, a social worker interviewed us and asked us what kind of a child we wanted. Huh? What kind? We wanted a child from Korea. Boy, girl, didn't matter. Oh, but you must have a preference, she insisted. We thought about it. No, we didn't. Yes, you do. She insisted. We then proceeded to draw a picture of the child we thought we wanted: girl, toddler, out of diapers, and more. She wrote it all down and said the agency would get back to us. They did. They sent us a letter saying that they did not have the kind of child that we wanted. It really knocked us down. Here we had reluctantly put together a list of what we thought we wanted in a child, only to find denial due to all the specifics. We stopped working with that agency, took the next six months to recover from the disappointment and started again with a new agency, who did not require us to put together a list. And from them we received the perfect child -- a boy, three months old, very much in diapers. Surprise. While it helps to articulate what we want, we can overdo it, thereby setting ourselves up for disappointment. Thereby missing the surprises that change can offer us. It's important, then, to know what we want. To set a goal, to have a dream, to follow a vision. To have agency in the changes we wish to see happen. If we did not know what we wanted, how would we know what choices to make, what paths to follow? At the same time it is also important, in knowing what we want, to leave room for the surprises that change will bring, to have the ability to give up some, or even most, of what we wanted. Some poems don't rhyme and it doesn't matter whether we want them to or not. So the challenge for us lies in finding ways to be with the free-form prose poem. We may never enjoy it as much as rhyming poetry, but if it's what we have, can we find value in it?
I think these are questions with particular power for us right now, we being in a state of otherwise. In times of change, we humans try to hold on to what we have, if we want it, or go for the complete opposite, if we don't want it. Either way, we can become stuck in wanting what we want, or think we want, and so prevent ourselves from experiencing the surprises that change can bring. We take ourselves out of making the best of the moment.
I've served you for eighteen years and for better or worse, you have become used to my ways of ministry. Soon another interim minister will come, and a settled minister two years after that. In them you will experience different ways of ministry. Some of the changes will seem wonderful, some will go unnoticed, some will bring anxiety. No matter what reactions they raise in you, I know you will exercise patience, flexibility, letting go, and a sense of humor. I know you will take responsibility for your own reactions and you will take the time to stop and breathe when you need to. I know you will find ways to speak your needs and explain what you want, without becoming stuck in what you want.
There was once a little girl who was walking beside a creek when she happened to see a frog that looked very sad. ˜I wonder why that frog is so sad,' she asked herself. Then she remembered a story once told by her mother about how a girl had kissed a frog and the frog had turned into a handsome prince. ˜Maybe that is why the frog is so sad. No one will kiss it so that it can become a prince.' She wouldn't mind meeting a handsome prince. She decided that she would give the frog a kiss herself. But nothing happened. There was still just a frog sitting in her hand. She set the frog back on the ground and said, ˜Poor froggy. I'm sorry I couldn't turn you into a handsome prince.' The frog replied, ˜Oh, but you have done something far better. You have made me a happier frog.' And the frog hopped off with a great big smile on his face. (adapted from a story by Chris Buice in A Bucketful of Dreams) And the girl? Did she feel disappointment that things did not turn out the way she wanted? Or did she, too, have a big smile on her face?
Change comes, otherwise comes. Things are not all they seem; nor are they quite otherwise.. (Lankavatara Sutra, adapted) May we remain open to the state of otherwise.
Song #1013 Open My Heart
Closing words by Mohammed Iqbal
Where in our hearts is that burning of desire? It is true that we are made of dust and the world is also made of dust, but the dust has motes rising. Whence comes that drive in us? We look to the starry sky and love storms in our hearts. Whence comes that storm? The journey of love is a very long journey. But sometimes with a sigh you can cross that vast desert. Search and search again without losing hope; you may find sometime a treasure on your way.