Wanderer, Worshipper, Lover of Leaving Rev. Diana Marie Bohn Lynnewood United Methodist Church August 16, 2015

Transcription

1 Wanderer, Worshipper, Lover of Leaving Rev. Diana Marie Bohn Lynnewood United Methodist Church August 16, 2015 Come wanderer, come worshipper, lover of leaving (and I add) come you without a home for ours is not a caravan of despair. These are the words of the great 13 th century Persian poet and Islamic scholar, Rumi who was well acquainted with migration and movement, with wandering and with leave-taking. When he was a teen, the Mongols invaded his home and his family headed west toward Baghdad and then to Damascus, and finally to Karaman, a town in today s south central Turkey. On their way, a story goes; Rumi was walking behind his Father, a respected scholar, when they encountered Attar, a renowned Persian poet who said of the two as they approached Oh look a sea followed by an ocean. Two human beings two majestic restless bodies moving at will over the earth, at home in their constant motion; at ease in their extraordinary power and depth. A sea followed by an ocean. What a glorious thing to say about two people. That got me to thinking by comparison there are so many less glorious souls walking the earth than Rumi and his sage father What might Attar have said about all the others that he saw walking one behind the other about all the more common and ordinary sojourners, about the lost and wandering beings you know, like you and me! Oh look a trickle followed by a puddle a gulley followed by a swamp. A droplet followed by some run-off. The truth is the world is full of us all of us living, walking bodies of water, flesh and bone. And, whether we fancy ourselves an ocean or a sea, a pond or a basin, a river or trickle, a droplet or tear, we are all in motion, ever changing, growing, and disappearing to reshape ourselves anew. Our worlds expand, and evaporate, as life carries us, and finally washes away everything that is nonessential. Our deepest and truest challenge through it all is the letting go. We all have our stories of leave-taking, and of good-byes. But truly letting go can be another thing entirely and maybe we never really let go completely. I remember when my Mom got remarried 8 years after my Dad s death. When the wedding

2 was over, I went back to the house I grew up in and took one of my closest friends with me, and I sobbed almost uncontrollably. My tears were a surprise to me. I remember sitting on my brother s bed with Teresa and just crying and crying. Why was I in my brother s room instead of my own? I have no idea there must have been a reason. And where did this crying come from, except that it was a profound and deeper letting go of the family and father who had been gone from my life for years. I didn t know my own soul s tenacity to cling to one I could not see or touch. But we want to hold on, don t we?! Sometimes we don t even realize we re holding on our need becomes so seamlessly woven into who we. It hurts to let go. There is security in holding on. It s scary and it feels like losing a part of ourselves when we unclasp our hands and hearts in order to free them to live more fully in the moment we have now. I know there are some of you who are transitioning toward moves or who have recently moved. If you have ever done the painstaking work of putting your hand on every item you own, and most of us have, you know how much sentimental weight can be attached to a piece of glass tableware that belonged to your mother or how much of your heart is tethered to a photograph of your child s first Christmas. It is our way, as human beings, to hold on to each other, and if we can t hold on to someone, then we hold on to their stuff. I once went to a concert in Fresno by an acoustic guitarist from Germany. He wrote his own songs and at one point in the concert he said he wanted to teach us a song he d written. He went through a lot of work preparing us for how difficult the song would be to learn and after his lengthy introduction he strummed his guitar and he started to sing out the words letting go that s it the hardest thing to learn Letting Go the whole song letting go. The disciples knew about letting go too. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, Jesus told them. How can you bring the kingdom to a hurting world when your hands and hearts are full of this one? And Jesus and the disciples were itinerant, travelling from place to place. They were wanderers, leave-takers. They had let go of house and home. Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

3 Interesting though, about this verse Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan suggests that it s not likely that Jesus would actually have said those words. He makes a strong case for what he thinks would be a truer translation of Jesus statement. Crossan believes Jesus more probably would have said Every fox has a den. Every bird has a nest. Only humans are homeless This distinction is significant to me because rather than Jesus making a statement about himself, this now becomes a description of a reality we all share as human beings. We are all wanderers through this world; and though most of us do have a place to lay our head, the homes we really seek are found in relationships with each other. And because we are all finite and flawed creatures, we will leave each other homeless for a brief time or longer at one time or another. We will fail each other. Relationships will unravel, lives will change, and we will find ourselves bereft for a time; separated from the home we have made in the love of another. People we love will die and we will become dislocated. When my dad died I remember walking around the house lost and lonely. For months I isolated myself from friends and familiar activities. The home I knew in him was gone and I felt homeless. When Grady and I have an argument, and I realize the distance between us, I feel awful and I so desperately want to feel at home with him again. There simply is no permanent address for us as human beings, making our homes in one another, and the more desperately we cling to the idea that there is, the more we close ourselves off from the fullness of love and life itself. Our deepest and truest challenges through it all, is the letting go. There is an art to it this letting go. I ll close with a story about a man named Oren who understands that life will carry us and finally wash away everything that is non-essential. In the letting go lies the mystery and the grace. By Bruce Holland Rogers Divestiture We do it like this. I go across the street to Oren's house. Oren has loaded the plastic eggs the night before. He puts five or six of them in a brown paper bag. We don't do more than five or six

4 at a time. Then he gets his walker with the oxygen tank, and the brown paper bag goes into the basket in front, and we go out Oren's door, down the ramp, all the way down the street, past the park, and along the river path. That's where we do it, on the river path. But I'm making this sound too easy. Everything's hard and takes a long time. That's how it is for us, at our age. It takes a long time to get down the ramp. It takes a long time for us to walk to the end of the street. We have to stop for Oren to catch his breath. He doesn't look too good. His face is kind of gray. But eventually we get all the way to the park, and in time we get through the park to the river path. And then we begin. We walk a little, and then we stop. Oren says, Anybody? He can't turn around, so he has to ask me if anyone's in sight behind us. We can't do it when anybody's watching. When we have a stretch of path to ourselves, he reaches into the bag. His hands shake. The beds of his fingernails are purple. He takes out one of the eggs, and I crack it open so we can have one last look at part of his collection. Maybe it's a Canadian silver dollar from 1967 with the goose in flight, or it's a British crown with Saint George killing the dragon. A lot of times it's just an ordinary silver dollar, a Morgan or a Peace. We admire it. Some of those coins are so pretty. Sometimes it's a coin with a story, like that Luxembourg hundred francs with John the Blind charging into battle, and Oren fills me in on the details, and I say, My, my. Isn't that something? Then we do it like this. We put the coin back inside the egg, check again to see we're alone, and I hide the egg where Oren tells me. In the crook of a tree. In among the blackberry brambles. Under some leaves with just a tiny bit of pink or purple showing. Oren has lived here his whole life, and the river path is where he used to hunt for pop bottles. I grew up somewhere else, but I remember the hunt, the triumph of a good haul. One bottle was good for two pieces of penny candy. Five bottles were worth a dime, and that was a comic book. Oren says, Wouldn't that be a good feeling? He has to catch his breath between sentences. You find an egg, and inside it a silver crown? Silver is up so high that just one of these coins is real money. Of course, I kind of think it would be sad if whoever found one of these eggs went right to the coin shop and sold it. My favorites, of the ones we have hidden so far, are the Polish coin with the girl haloed in wheat, the Nicaraguan cordoba with the smiling sun, and the Ceylonese five rupees with the sixteen ducks walking around the coin in a circle. We aren't too regular. Oren doesn't want anyone to come looking on a schedule. Anyway, that's how we do it. I don't know about the others. Their eggs started showing up on the river path in places where we knew we hadn't hidden anything. Sometimes they were reusing our eggs, we think. Sometimes their eggs were different sizes, or a different color, or they made an egg that was half blue and half green, which we don't do. Inside the first one, we found this little poem on a scrap of paper:

5 The oak tree stands noble on the hill even in cherry blossom time Basho One big yellow egg held a smaller egg that held a smaller egg that held a still smaller egg that held a slip of paper with the word Sunshine. Another of these nesting eggs, a green one, held the word Grass. We have found eggs bearing a wristwatch without a strap, a pair of cufflinks, a roll of postcard stamps, a boondoggle keychain, a phone number, a tiny pen knife, and a dollar bill. Oren usually spots them first, and I bring them to him. Then we put them back. We make our way along the river, and every so often Oren has to lean over the walker in a way that lets him get his breath. The oxygen can only help so much. While we're resting like that, Oren spots a hollow tree that is such a perfect hiding place, it's a wonder we never saw it before. We're alone. We crack open the last egg of the day and look at the coin. Oren says it's from Iran. One side shows a lion holding a sword. It's a beauty. When I get to the tree, I find the big blue egg that is already there. I swap eggs. I bring the blue one to Oren. I can tell by the size and feel of it that it's going to be another one of the nesting eggs. And, sure enough, when I start to open it for him, we find a blue egg inside a blue egg inside a blue egg. Inside the smallest egg is a slip of paper. It says, Air. Oren smiles. I think he'd laugh if he could. This one, he says. He pauses to get his breath. This one, I think I'll keep. May God bless our loving, our letting go, and our courageous living. Amen.