A Sermon by the Reverend Ellen Rowse Spero
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church,
Chelmsford, Massachusetts
November 30, 2003
Ancient Reading: From Chapters 15 and 16, the Tao te Ching
Modern Reading: Howard Thurman from Meditations of the Heart
Copyright 2003, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
Last Tuesday, I had a long list of things to do: pick up my watch from the jewelers, go to the grocery store, bake a cake for Thanksgiving, pack for our trip to Stockbridge, take my car in for new tires, prepare a sermon for Sunday. So, I packed Henry and our dog, Fritzl in the car with the thought of running errands. But once in the car, faced with the thought of crowded parking lots and stores, I drove past the strip mall and out to Nara Park. Nara is the sight of an old quarry in North Acton that has been made into a wonderful park, with a small lake, walking paths, athletic fields, and a play ground. It was a lovely, sunny day for November. We had the whole park to ourselves. I let Fritzl off the leash. Henry napped while I pushed him around the lake. Fritzl ran back and forth, chasing sticks and splashing in the water. As I walked, enjoying the stillness and the sunshine, one of my favorite lines from the Psalms came to mind: "Be still and know that I am God." The prayers in the Psalms are full of noise and action and hyperbole, the Psalmists is always surrounded by loud trouble: shouting mobs, roaring lions, charging bulls, hungry dogs, crashing waters and trembling mountains. But it is in pausing, taking a step away from it all, reaching for quiet and stillness, that the Psalmist finally is able to sense the presence of the Holy, to find his or her center and grounding. Lao-tzu uses a different metaphor to describe the same action: coming to stillness to allow the mud to settle, the waters to clear so one can see, emptying the mind so one can hear one’s heart. These are paths to the Island of Peace for the soul, as Thurman calls it. Walking around the lake, with the world to myself, I realized how much I have missed stillness and the calming presence of holy it brings to me. It had been a long time since I had taken the time and energy to stop doing, and let the mud settle. This has gotten lost in the wonderful storm that is Henry. I love my son and I am so glad to have him in my life. But let’s face it, babies are demanding little beings and I have had to give up temporarily, I hope, the time I used to take for prayer and yoga. The impulse to run off to Nara Park for an hour was not just an avoidance of my chores. It was an embrace of something that had gotten lost in the busyness of my life, so quiet that I did not notice how much I had missed it until my soul reached out for that peace. It struck me then that I needed to hear this sermon as much as anyone, that I have been haunted by the pull of stillness, to let the mud settle, to create an island of peace for our souls.
I see this particular Sunday as the eye of the Holiday Storm: a pause to take a deep breath after Thanksgiving and before Christmas, Hanukkah and Solstice. It is not easy. The weeks between Thanksgiving and the December holidays are the busiest of the year in terms of travel, shopping, baking, and parties. The kids are on overdrive, with all the school vacations and anticipation of the holidays, with all the decorating and gifts. There is the joy and the stress of family reunions. Then there are the holiday cards: I am still clinging to my annual fantasy of getting mine done before Ground hog day. Then there is the relentless marketing of the season. I was constantly reminded by new reporters and advertisers that this past Friday was THE busiest shopping day of the year. There was this kind of countdown: finish your turkey and RUN to the nearest mall and join everyone else in America in being the first to get your holiday shopping done.
Busyness is not the only stress of the season. It can be a difficult time. We miss those we love, lost to us through time, through death, through distance. And for those of us struggling in any way: with loneliness, with the loss of health or work or the like, the constant insistence that we MUST be happy and spend lots of money to show it, makes our struggles even more isolating.
In actuality, this season is about cultivating peace for our souls. The time of year, with its early nights and cold weather, lends itself to contemplation, to quiet. It is bookended on one side by Thanksgiving, a time set aside to contemplate all for which are grateful. On the other end: Solstice, Hanukkah, and Christmas, all celebrate stories that move us toward hope: hope in the incremental increase of light each dark winter day, hope in a bit of oil to bring light for not just one, not just two but eight nights, hope in a child, born in scandalously poor and anonymous circumstance, to bring healing and peace to a troubled world. It is a season for making room at the table, in the circle, and in the inn, for reaching out to the stranger, for welcoming new light and new life, for reclaiming and reviewing the purposes and dreams to which our lives are tied. It is the season of hope and joy from unexpected sources. But we can only know this if we take the time to listen, to return to the source of our deepest meaning and connection.
Don’t get me wrong. I love this season. I love all the singing and all the cookies. I love the craziness of being in a mixed family where we take a break from decorating the Christmas Tree to light our collection of menorahs. Josh will tell you how much I love to shop! I love the outpouring of decoration and the light. When we lived in Virginia, Josh, Sam, and I made an annual pilgrimage in an adjoining neighborhood to the "House o’ Lights", every inch of home and lawn lit up with symbols of the season. You know me well enough to know that I believe in making a joyful noise, in having holy fun and playful worship.
But joyful noise and playful expression and celebration are different than busyness. Busyness can cause us to lose our sense of meaning and connection. If we are too busy to be grateful or to be hospitable, if we are too busy to hope and to dream, then we’ve lost the truth of this season’s stories, we miss the constant miracles and moments of grace that fill our lives. I remember listening with a kind of horror to a story on the radio last year. There was a mother who spent a great deal of time and energy making these decorative scrapbooks of her young daughter. She decorated the tree and the house with attention and care, she wrapped the presents beautifully, she dressed her daughter in a lovely outfit. And she took lots of pictures. When the pictures came back after the holidays, she was upset with how her daughter’s hair looked. So, she took her daughter out for a haircut and did the whole thing over again: she put the tree back up and redecorated it, rewrapped the presents, redressed her daughter and re-photographed the whole thing. Now, I know this is over the edge. This mother had really lost touch with what Christmas is all about. However, I think that all of us are capable of this on a much smaller scale, in little bits here and there, until we are so caught up in what we have to do, in the stresses and strains, the decisions large and small brought on by our work and family responsibilities, and pressures, that we do lose touch with the source of our serenity, with the dreams and purposes that give us life.
There are risks in stillness, in letting the mud settle and the water clear. As much as my heart yearns for stillness and the connection with the holy it brings me, I am afraid too. Allowing for stillness allows for all the emotions and fears and doubts, all the sadness and loss and struggles that I push down and away to make themselves heard and felt. Not only mine, but those of those I love, those of those to whom I minister. In stillness, as I watch the mud settle, I am aware of all that I cannot do, of all the injustices and pains and losses I cannot erase, of the wholeness and healing I cannot offer. But if I stay with it, I become aware of a larger truth: that it is not my responsibility to make everything perfect. Rather, I can just keep folks company in the stillness, hold their hands and listen to their stories. Not just in the extraordinary times but the ordinary as well. Stillness allows me to distill out the connections and meanings that matter, that tie us to the holy and the sacred. That if I ache and hurt and mourn at times, it is because I love so deeply and am loved back the same way. This is the gift that gives purpose and dream to my life.
The purpose of our being here is to create a worshipping community. To make it happen, we do need to work, to contribute our time and our talent and our money. We need to participate in the Holiday Fair, the auction, the May and July breakfasts. We need to teach Sunday school or serve on a committee or volunteer as a greeter or host coffee hour or bring flowers or serve for Community Table. Activity and busyness is part of congregational life. But they are not its purpose. I hope that we are also cultivating islands of peace for our souls. I hope that we each find a moment of stillness each Sunday: in silence, in the music, or in the words. I hope we are finding ways to let the muddle settle and the water clear so we can discern what the purposes and dreams of our lives are, what matters most. Be still, be still, and know that I am.