SERMON for March 10, 2019

Transcription

1 SERMON for March 10, 2019 POTENTIALS FOR COMPANIONSHIP: Were You Cut Out for a Team Road Trip? Rev. Jack Donovan Unitarian Universalist Church - St. Petersburg, Florida READINGS (printed below, after the sermon) Invocation Adapted from No Caravan of Despair by Rebecca Parker Meditation In Silence Reading #1 from The Meaning of Human Existence by E.O. Wilson Reading #2 from In a Different Voice, by Carol Gilligan Closing Deep Peace to You (hymnal reading #681) CHILDREN S SERMON Once upon a time, there was a wild squash seed. No joke there really was. And each year it grew and produced squashes and fed the birds. One day, a human being tried eating the squash and she liked it and kept coming back for more and one day she discovered how to help the seed grow into whole gardens of squashes. Then one day, a wild corn seed came to the garden and it liked the garden because the squash leaves covered the ground and kept away weeds and kept in the moisture that the corn needed to grow and also, the squash had prickly vines and that kept away hungry critters like bunnies. And the human beings liked to eat the corn along with the squash so they helped them both grow. But the squash seed didn t really want the corn there because it just grew tall and didn t do anything to help the squash. Then one day, a wild bean seed came to the garden and it liked the garden because the squash kept away weeds and hungry critters and also, it could get off the ground and get lots of sun and space by climbing up the tall corn stalk. Well, once again, the squash seed said, What s in it for me this bean plant and this corn plant? I don t want their seed around. And the corn said the same thing. But then they discovered that where the bean seed grew, the soil became richer with nutrients, which was good for the squash and corn. So suddenly the squash and corn wanted the bean around. And the human beings loved it all because they could be very healthy as long as they could eat all three squash, corn, and bean. And they tended the garden and the seeds and called them the three sisters because they were good for one another and, really, they were very good for the people and, really, the people were very good for the seeds. And they became a community and were always at their best when they were together. What s the lesson? When you have a community where the different seeds are good for one another squash, corn, climbing bean, and human bean everybody s seeds flourish. My experience is that each of us is different in some ways - and my different ways can really help 1

2 you flourish and your different ways can really help me flourish if we are willing to get along and cooperate. We just have to pay attention to learn how we can help one another. Worth remembering? Thanks for listening and sharing. Time for you to go off together to other adventures. ADULTS SERMON If you are two years old, can you outrace the tumbling line of little waves breaking along the shore? Legs pumping away, little whoops of joy to start the race again, mother chasing after when you ve gone way too far. And the mad joy only increases when your four-year-old sister arrives with your father and she joins the race and now both parents are chasing after and you re all like a flock of plovers or skimmers racing to see what the ocean brings to you. That s a scene Alisun and I witnessed last week at Ft. DeSoto Beach the roots of companionship with each other and the universe. A couple of days earlier, my brother and sister-in-law had returned to their home in Maine, just up the coast from the artist Winslow Homer s old studio and with that and this Fort DeSoto Beach scene, I thought of one of Winslow Homer s great paintings a little family of three standing on a black stone ledge jutting upon the sea like a prow, bundled up against the wintry blast, watching a great surge of light-suffused spray rise towering up before them father embracing mother, mother embracing baby, just out of reach of the sea s grasping chaos. Imagine the thrill, the joy, of being together, safe and commanding in the face of such wrenching power and certain death an image of the beauty and necessity of companions on life s voyage. Why would these images of the universe s cutting edge remind me of comedian Tina Fey? Perhaps it was these words in her memoir Bossypants: In the middle of a busy workday, I would tell myself, Once I have the baby full-time to myself, everything will be easier. And then it hit me; that day was not coming. This work thing was not going away no prolonged time of just baby and me. And then I sobbed in my office for ten minutes. Of course I m not supposed to admit that there is triannual torrential sobbing in my office, because it s bad for the feminist cause. It makes it harder for women to be taken seriously in the workplace. It makes it harder for other working moms to justify their choice. But I have friends who stay home with their kids and they also have a triannual sob, so I think we should call it even. I think we should be kind to one another about it. I think we should agree to blame the children. Welcome to Women s History Month and to the seeds of companionship on the cutting ledge of our modern day. There are many ways to be on the growing edge, and there is so much uncertainty in life. Often there is nothing to account for it except the jarring, jubilant journey and our innocent companions. And lots of times, they are what saves us. God! Step back from the ledge, Jack, 2

3 you idiot! they shout and the next wave sweeps everything away from where you had been standing, thinking you had been standing safe on dry land. Maybe those are only small stories of companionship and community to be fitted into the grand myths remembered as the forty days of Lent begins. Maiden Mother Mary of Nazareth saying, My soul grows God and through me this enlarged God will finally raise the oppressed and redress the oppressor. There s a Women s History declaration for us. And for a while at least, so it happened notre dame s religion of caring. I would hazard to say that Maiden Mary s son Jesus was driven to the wilderness by the spirit inherited from his mother for forty days to fast away any yearning for power other than to spread grace, the power of life - and so we remember during Lent s forty days beginning this past Wednesday s anointing with ashes. And we remember that our bodies too will die - but our spirits and our investment of their grace in kindness and caring will easter in a thousand generations. One wonders why the church could not have been content with that the most powerful aspiration ever, swallowed by the most powerful empire ever. So what will happen to those children on the beach as they grow - and to their parents as well, for they will find that they also are not yet finished growing? The esteemed sociobiologist and evolutionary psychologist E.O. Wilson says that it is up to us, not some higher power, to set our goals based on our own self-understanding. And what we are, he says, is an Earth-species evolved due to natural selection with special potentials. So here we are. What are our potentials for fulfillment for salvation, if you will. They are, says Wilson, the potentials of our minds and bodies to communicate, recognize, evaluate, bond, cooperate, compete, create, and feel warmed with pleasure by belonging. It is, he concludes, only our terribly narrow tribalism that keeps all Earthkind from peace and prosperity only our limitations of understanding who we are and for whom we could grow to care. The equally esteemed developmental psychologist Carol Gilligan says we can overcome our tribalism in the same way a mother and child build trust, by coming into connection where there has been separation, letting any breach be repaired through caring, developing concern for the views and needs of others, assuming responsibility to help and care, helping at least to insure that none are hurt. Our potentials let us do that, and even incline us to do that, barring fear. No one is an island, entire to itself, wrote Elizabethan clergyman John Donne. Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. Yet, implicit in this poem and in the insights of biology and psychology is that while connection may be a reality, one s sense of connection is just a potential until it is developed into reality. 3

4 Often, it seems to me, we all feel like an island entire to ourself. Sometimes that feeling is of power and sometimes that feeling is of powerlessness. But the truth in both feelings is that the sense of connection is only a potential. It must be developed. We must talk about how and, ironically, it seems it starts with learning to separate oneself from the source and from the sustainers of one s being. Mine we say of our own beings. Isn t that true, even though that truth is only partial? Isn t it the case that only after seeing ourselves as individual selves that we start to learn to seek and become companions on the journey? The journey itself now seems to me less about traversing time and space than about traversing the dimensions of the spirit. It seems to me, and I would say it has seemed to the developmental psychologists and the mystics of the ages, that in the wilderness-time of life, each must learn what is truly worth doing with the creative power we draw from the source. And, I think, wilderness-time meanders throughout our lives, rising to important attention when it is time for our circles of friendship and caring to start growing again. To see the magnificently expansive potential dimensions of our spirits, we need to have and be companions. We have the potentials for it mirror neurons evolved in our brains that allow recognition and compassion and judiciousness and nesting in communal empathy. If there were not other people and creatures in our hearts and minds in our spirits - in our sense of relationship with self and world - then the seed of our potentials would have neither ground nor nourishment by which to grow. How big your community family grows when your soul starts magnifying your source! Sisters Corn, Squash and Bean cannot grow without Mother Earth and Father Sun, or without Brother Rain or Brother Air, or without fourth Sister Bee-Attractor Plant or Brother Pollinating Bee. The dimensions of our spirit, potential in the seed of the soul, grow and grow and grow, from individuation to inclusion. That day on the Ft. DeSoto shoreline, Alisun and I felt filled with light. Did the light come from two delightedly joyful little children racing against their ocean playmate? Did the light come from two delightedly fearful parents chasing after their dashing little plovers before they got dashed? Did the light come from spiraling skimmers slicing translucent waves to catch sparkling minnows? Did the light come from Alisun and I having experienced all these things in our lifetimes spanning three and four generations and now feeling them again with delighted fear and joy - wandering and wondering on the shore, what was next for us and the world to do? In the meantime, said Alisun, sometimes you just get a feeling that you are the singularity, the source, that is in all things. Well - more questions than answers. Typical UU. But really, for each of us, I think there is only one question more than there are answers and that question is - the next one. May the source be with us. 4

5 READINGS (printed below, after the sermon) Invocation adapted from No Caravan of Despair by Rebecca Parker We are here at the threshold. We - who have crossed many thresholds to arrive, Coming out from identities and locations too small; Coming across over distances and boundaries that beckoned further; Coming with loves, partners, children, memories, wisdom, will; Coming to our senses, to end predation and establish protection; Coming again - to hope, to commit, to matter. We are here at this threshold - where minds and hearts may open; To this home of spirit - deepening in prayer and contemplation; of hope deepening in justice and compassion; of history - informing our lives, cherished beyond death; of thresholds to come - helping others cross to peace and love. Let us cross together. Meditation In Silence In silence I open to the source of grace; In silence I am grateful to all gracious beings; In silence I move myself toward graciousness. Reading #1 from The Meaning of Human Existence by E.O. Wilson Humanity, I argue, arose entirely on its own through an accumulated series of events during evolution. We are not predestined to reach any goal, nor are we answerable to any power but our own. Only wisdom based on selfunderstanding, not piety, will save us. The creation of groups from personal and intimate mutual knowledge was the unique achievement of humanity. The origin of the human condition is best explained by the natural selection for social interaction the inherited propensities to communicate, recognize, evaluate, bond, cooperate, compete, and from all these the deep warm pleasure of belonging to your own special group. We have enough intelligence, goodwill, generosity, and enterprise to turn Earth into a paradise. The problem holding everything up thus far is that Homo sapiens is an innately dysfunctional species hampered by genetic adaptations that worked very well for millions of years but increasingly a hindrance in a globally urban and technoscientific society. People find it hard to care about 5

6 other people beyond a generation or two of their own tribe or country, much less other animal species. We need to understand ourselves in both evolutionary and psychological terms in order to plan a more rational, catastrophe-proof future. We must learn to behave. Reading #2 from In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan Trust grows when babies and mothers establish that they can find each other again after the inevitable moments of losing touch. It is not the goodness of the mother or the relationship per se that is the basis for trust; it is the ability of mother and baby together to repair the breaks in their relationship that builds a safe house for love. The truth in the women s voice of an ethic of care (is) the tie between relationship and responsibility. The substance of women s moral concern, sensitivity to the needs of others and the assumption of responsibility for taking care, lead women to attend to voices other than their own and to include in their judgement other points of view. While the modern male ethic of justice proceeds from the premise of equality that everyone should be treated the same the traditional female ethic of care rests on the premise of nonviolence that no one should be hurt. Closing Deep Peace to You (hymnal reading #681) 6