THE GAIN THAT WAITS ON LOSS. A sermon preached by Galen Guengerich All Souls Unitarian Church, New York City November 11, 2012

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1 THE GAIN THAT WAITS ON LOSS A sermon preached by Galen Guengerich All Souls Unitarian Church, New York City November 11, 2012 In preparation for All Souls at Sundown this evening, I ve been reading the poetry of Katherine Lee Bates, best known for having penned the words to America the Beautiful. Born in Falmouth, Massachusetts in 1859, Bates was educated at Wellesley College and at Oxford. At the age of thirty-two, she was appointed Chair of the English literature department at Wellesley, a post she would hold for 29 years. About the same time as her appointment, Bates met Katharine Coman, who served on the Wellesley faculty as the Chair of the economics department and Dean of the College. Bates and Coman lived as a couple for 25 years in what was referred to as a Boston marriage. Together, they were energetic activists for a wide variety causes: women s rights, workers' rights, the environment, and international law. As an Oxford-educated professor at Wellesley, Bates knew well the prerogatives of privilege. But as a woman and as a lesbian in 19 th century America, Bates knew the pain that comes when society marginalizes an essential aspect of your identity. One of her sonnets captures this counterpoint of privilege and pain. The sonnet is titled Felices, which means happy in Spanish. We count them happy who have richly known The sweets of life, the sunshine on the hills, The mosses in the valley, love that fills The heart with tears as fragrant as thine own, O tender moonlight lily, over-blown, When the inevitable season wills, By gentle winds beside thy native rills-- We count them happy, yet not these alone. There is a Crown of Thorns, Way of the Cross, Consuming Fire that burns the spirit pure. By luster of the gold set free from dross, By light of heaven seen best through earth's obscure, By the exceeding gain that waits on loss-- Behold, we count them happy who endure. There are two ways to think about happiness, Bates suggests in this sonnet. Happiness sometimes comes from experiences she describes as the sweets of life: ~ 1 ~

2 sunshine on the hills, lilies in the moonlight, gentle wind by flowing stream, loving hearts. This is naïve happiness. The other kind of happiness comes after you ve been wrestled to the ground by life. You ve felt the crown of thorns; you ve walked the way of the cross. You ve been through the fire that has destroyed what you love and consumed what you hold dear, but it has also clarified your sense of what s really important. And you ve made it through. The gain that waits on loss the gain that attends to loss and comes after it this gain is an exceeding gain, Bates says, a gain that s over and above. The exceeding gain that waits on loss comes when you endure. This is profound happiness. Today we commemorate Veterans Day. It began as Armistice Day, set aside by the United States, Great Britain, and France to commemorate November 11, 1918, the day that ended what came to be called World War I. After World War II, November 11 was recognized as a day of tribute to the veterans and the dead of that conflict as well. Over the past two-and-a-quarter centuries, more than 42 million Americans have served in our nation s military forces, and more than a million have been killed. We owe them a debt of gratitude for the freedom they preserved and the prosperity freedom has made possible. This debt we seek in some small way to repay by acknowledging our exceeding gain that waits upon their loss. This story the story of struggle and sacrifice, of courage in the face of setbacks and resilience in the face of loss lies at the heart of our self-understanding as a nation. At our best, we don t flee from loss, or deny it, or cover it up. We wait on loss; we attend to loss both our own losses and those suffered by those around us. If you want to tell the story of America, or embody the spirit of America, you need to tell the story of the gain that waits on loss and the happiness that comes to those who endure. Because we have lost and yet persevered, we have also known exceeding gain. The times when we stumble as a nation are times when we become enthralled by our exceeding gain and forget what it was like to face setbacks and suffer loss. It s easy to do, especially when the way of the cross is behind you and the sweets of life surround you. But many people in our nation today are surrounded by struggle and waiting on loss: Hispanic children whose parents have been deported; abused teens who run away from home; gay and lesbian couples who can t get married; single moms who work two jobs to make ends meet. They don t yet know about the gain; they re just trying to endure. On Tuesday, voters decided to attend to some of these struggles and losses. Three states voted to legalize same-sex marriage on Tuesday, and a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage went down to defeat in Minnesota. Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock went down to defeat as well, along with their sadistic views on rape and abortion. And despite a vigorous campaign by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to curtail abortion rights, more Catholics voted for Obama than Romney. Americans also voted to send a record number of women to Capitol Hill, including Tammy Baldwin, the lesbian senator-elect from Wisconsin, and Tammy ~ 2 ~

3 Duckworth, the Asian-American representative-elect from Illinois who is also a disabled veteran. Beginning next year, all of the top political officeholders in New Hampshire the governor, as well as both senators and both representatives will be women. One of the things we want to know about candidates running for office is whether they have known loss and then bounced back, whether they ve gotten lost and then found their way, whether they ve fallen apart and then put themselves back together again. We want to know whether they have struggled and needed a second chance. We want to know whether they are like us. Writing this past Wednesday for the blog Religion Dispatches, Kathryn Lofton, a professor of American studies and religious studies at Yale, observes that political candidates especially need to address the parts of them that seem the least like us. George W. Bush, for example, was the son of a president, went to Yale, and owned a baseball team hardly the profile of someone Joe Six-pack would feel comfortable sitting next to on a bar stool. But W told his privileged life story by evoking the story of the prodigal son, who squandered his advantages and made a mess of things, before he sobered up and found his way back home. Almost none of us have owned a baseball team, but all of us know what it feels like to lose our way and then find it again. Barack Obama s origins, shrouded for most Americans in the mystery of Africa and the strangeness of Islam, became immediately familiar once they evoked the story of the immigrant child who made good. Obama converted to Christianity, went to Harvard, and became a Senator. Most Americans have never been to Kenya, nor could they name the five pillars of Islam. But they know what the American dream looks like, and they re reassured to know that sometimes it happens to be true. How about Mitt Romney? The thing about Romney that most American seem to think is least like them is not his wealth, but the fact that he s a Mormon. To most Americans, Mormonism is mostly a mystery, a quasi-christian faith that often seems to be hiding something. The most potent secret, Lofton points out, is the one advertised, but not revealed. In fact, one could argue that Mormonism is the quintessentially American faith. (You d be wrong, by the way: Unitarian Universalism is the quintessentially American faith. But you could argue that Mormonism is.) Mormonism is a pioneer faith, whose founders were driven west by the persecution of Protestants. The Mormons persevered nonetheless; their hard work and self-sacrifice eventually enabled them to become religiously robust and financially successful. The story Romney did not tell with sufficient clarity is how he came to embody Mormon values and thus share both the Mormon story of struggle and the Mormon story of success. Most Americans have never met a Mormon. But they know that faith can provide you with a sense of purpose, keep you disciplined, and help you overcome obstacles. Even if Americans related to Romney s story of success, they never found a way to relate to his mostly untold story of struggle. He didn t seem enough like them. ~ 3 ~

4 Benedict Carey wrote an article for The New York Times several years ago titled This is Your Life (And How You Tell It). He cites research that analyzed how people retold the story of their lives. People who were struggling emotionally usually ended the description of each event even the happy ones with a note of disappointment: the wedding party was great until the best man fell down drunk. People who were energetic and involved, on the other hand, the kind of people the researchers called generative adults, laid out their lives in terms of what researchers called distinctly American cultural narratives, of emancipation or atonement, of Horatio Alger advancement, of epiphany and second chances. If you re going to be emotionally healthy, not to mention happy, you need to know how to make a comeback. To know exceeding gain, you have to wait on loss. That s our human story, and it lies at the heart of our religious quest. We struggle at times, and fall short, and lose our way. We feel inadequate or irresponsible. We feel inadvertently overlooked or purposely ignored. We need to find a way through the valley of the shadow to sunlit heights on the other side. We need a road from what is past to what is possible. If you ve been through a difficult divorce and discovered on the other side a relationship worthy of marriage again, as I have, then you know the exceeding gain that waits on loss. If you ve had to leave the faith of your upbringing, and much of your extended family as well, in order to discover a faith you can believe in, as I have, then you know the exceeding gain that waits on loss. You know that there is a road from what is past to what is possible. The good life is not a life without loss; it s a life that uses loss to transform character and make life. This dynamic holds true for our nation as well. We ve discovered that struggle makes us strong. When we help others through the storm, we also help ourselves. We ve always managed to find a road from what is past to what is possible. No one describes that road better than Katherine Lee Bates, in her words to our national hymn, America the Beautiful. In the summer of 1893, Bates traveled to Colorado Springs to serve as a summer lecturer at Colorado College. She described one of her outings in the following note: One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse. Once down the mountain, Bates dashed off the first version of what would quickly become her most celebrated poem. Bates later rewrote the poem to apply its insights to a specific political purpose, which had to do with her opposition to the US annexation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. For my part, I prefer the original version, which is printed in your order of service. Please stand as you are willing and able, and sing with me. ~ 4 ~

5 AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL (1893 version) O beautiful for halcyon skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the enameled plain! Till souls wax fair as earth and air And music-hearted seas. O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! Till paths be wrought through wilds of thought By pilgrim foot and knee! O beautiful for glory tale Of liberating strife, When once and twice, for our avail, We lavished precious life! Till selfish gain no longer stain The banner of the free! O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! Till nobler souls keep once again Thy shining jubilee! ~ 5 ~