The Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvellous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,

And bow their heads.

Using an egg that doesn’t contain the expected, we see that sometimes life surprises us in ways we never would imagine. Sometimes things happen that seem impossible. Sometimes we can’t explain why something happened, whether it’s good or it’s bad. And we’re left to deal with it, to make the best of it. 

 

I knew a man who had printed on his stationery this proverb: “Nothing is settled. Everything matters.” It established a certain ambience for reading his letters, as if to say: what you are about to read is to be taken seriously, but is not final.

I remember him and his proverb sometimes, especially when it seems impossible to change the world or myself in any significant way. Times like the beginnings of new years.

 

“Sorry, Jim,” I say. “It’s not true that nothing is settled. In the past year choices have been made, losses have been suffered, there has been growth and decay, there have been commitments and betrayals. None of that can be undone. A year ago no one knew whether during this year one person would become pregnant, another would get cancer, another would take a new job, another would have an accident, but now it is settled.

 

“One day this year I was present just when someone needed me; another day I was busy doing something else when I was needed. One day I said something to a friend that enabled a person to see life in a new way. The best and the worst of those days is now written. All my tears, of joy or sorrow, cannot erase it.”

 

If I stay with my meditation long enough, the reply comes. “Robbie,” says Jim, “You have misunderstood the proverb. It is true that you cannot escape the consequences of your actions or the chances of the world. But what is not settled is how the story turns out. What is not settled is what the meaning of your life will be.”

 

The meaning of a life is not contained within one act, or one day, or one year. As long as you are alive the story of your life is still being told, and the meaning is still open. As long as there is life in the world, the story of the world is still being told. What is done is done, but nothing is settled. 

And if nothing is settled, then everything matters. Every choice, every act… matters. Every word, every deed is making the meaning of your life and telling the story of the world. Everything matters … and, more importantly, everything matters today. 

 

I expect that the word hope is used more often at this time of year...as spring emerges, during the Easter season, during the season of Passover...than at any other time of the year. I fear that ‘hope’ is another one of those many words that Unitarians don’t like to use. It is said that faith is the evidence of things hoped for. Many of us prefer to see the evidence...just the facts, ma’am. 

 

Or, maybe, hope has been taken from us. The word has certainly been co-opted by many untrustworthy voices. One is a loud and all-consuming voice, from those who talk about hope as being based in a particular eschatology, a particular belief system, that would have us place all of our eggs, as it were, in the basket of what happens after this life. That voice tells us that this life...including all of our choices and all of our deeds...is only significant in the context of what comes after this life. Hope is used to buoy up a transcendent faith. 

 

Another voice that has claimed ‘hope’ is one that comes from the self-improvement mega-industry. Hope sells, and apparently it sells really well when it is sugar-coated, perhaps even chocolate-enriched, with inspirational stories and lessons that tug at our heart-strings even as they imply that such hopeful outcomes are just out of our reach, just beyond our grasp...that is, unless we buy the CD and the workbook and attend the seminar. This voice is painted in pastels and smiley faces, and smacks more than just a little bit of insincerity, causing our cynical cackles to rise up in reaction. This kind of hope is vacuous, but also vaguely comforting, in a disconcerting way. 

 

Yet another voice which has co-opted hope is that cynical one, the existential one, the one that says nothing really matters, that we have no effect on anything, that nothing lasts, and we might as well stop trying. It has consigned hope to a pile of shallow and inane garbage that any ‘thinking’ person would never touch. Hope is for irrational sissies. 

 

On Thursday, I bought a house. Yep, I did...finally. As I stood in the yard with my Realtor, facing the facts...there was already a registered offer, I had to be at a meeting in an hour, I had no time to think, and I was quite sure it was a good house for me...I felt a bit like I was holding a rotten egg.   You see, the first three, or four, or ten houses that I’ve been interested in here in Peterborough have been goose eggs...in each case I’ve gotten a bit attached, built up my hopes, and then had them break on me. You might call it lottery ticket syndrome. You know...where, every time you scratch the ticket you find the same thing, a losing ticket, and yet you try it again, hoping, praying, that this time the result will be different? Why should I think it would turn out any differently this time? 

 

That’s how I felt on Thursday. What a mixed message. We’ve probably all heard it said that the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results. I mean, why does anyone even buy lottery tickets, given the odds? One might say that lottery tickets are for the gullible, yet, I’m sure a winner (big or small) would say otherwise. And that’s the pull isn’t it, the chance that maybe, just maybe, it will turn out differently this time? Maybe, just maybe, this time the egg will sprinkle us with fortune. 

 

In the case of houses, I suppose I had come to a place of thinking I would never ‘win’, that nothing would ever change, that I wouldn’t get the house even if I made an offer. Still, I’ve haven’t been given any advice to ‘give up’ or to stop trying. Instead I’ve received a lot a reassuring words...you know, it’ll happen when it’s meant to, the right house will come along, etc. We want to believe, and to assure others, that it will all work out. But how do we know that?

 

The odds are so stacked against us winning the lottery, that perhaps there’s good reason to give up on that particular dream. But, to what extent do ‘odds’ and ‘predictability’ enter into a discussion on hope? I remember an interaction with a young boy in El Salvador several years ago. A friend I was traveling with asked him what he hoped for in his life, and his answer was that he had no right to hope, that he didn’t have the resources to allow himself to hope. His life had very poor odds, from his perspective. 

 

Is hope, then, a thing for both the privileged and the irrational? You might wonder, if you’ve been paying attention, what hope has to do with my sermon title for today and with the questions I suggested we’d explore. Fact is, I didn’t really intend to talk about hope; what I did want to talk about is whether or not our lives matter after we’re gone. And I found myself drawn into considering why it’s important to us...why we have such an urge to matter...why we bend or lean into a desire to have a purpose or to have some effect. We HOPE we matter. We want to matter. And often it feels out of our control. 

 

I can’t quite concede that hope is something we only express or send out when we have no control over what will happen. I can’t concede that whether or not we matter is completely out of our hands. Yes, circumstances and opportunities make it more or less possible for us to make a difference...it’s true that when people die, they leave different size holes in the fabric of life. But still, whether you know it or not, whether you see it or not, you matter. The words of that young child in El Salvador made a difference in me, a difference he may never be aware of (which is not to say that his life only has purpose because he affected me.)

 

We may never know the full effect we’ve had...for one thing, it’s not measurable at any one time, and for another, much of our effect may be felt after we’re gone. And yet, we have all lived...we all have had the experience of being the matter on which effect has been made. We know that things affect us, that people make their mark on us, that we are changed and transformed by the presence of others. How can it not also be true that we have a similar effect?

 

Robert Walsh, in today’s reading, says that only the past is settled.   That past, that which has already happened and which we cannot change, makes up our known experience...the past is what teaches us to expect that things will work out, or to expect that they won’t. What has already happened creates our expectation of the future, if not the future itself. 

 

You know what I mean. You take a bad fall. For a long time after that, you see yourself falling again. You walk too cautiously, and sometimes that tension trips you up. 

 

The receptionist at your dentist’s office is warm and friendly. Even though this is a place that gives you a panic attack, you find yourself at ease because of her presence. One day she isn’t there when you come in for your appointment, and your fear shoots through the roof. You acutely feel her absence. 

 

You study for a test but when the time comes to take it, you freeze. You can’t think. Your palms get sweaty and your heart races, and yet, you’re able to pull it out and finish the exam...in fact, you do better than expected. You begin to think of yourself as a person who can succeed, even in the face of pressure, and sure enough, that’s how you make your way through life. 

 

You’re making cookies. You’ve already creamed together the rich butter and sparkling sugar, and you break an egg into the batter. Your vast experience with eggs tells you that when you crack one open, you get a beautiful runny puddle with a yellow center. But this one is ugly and brown and stinks like...well, like rotten eggs. Even though the chances of getting another rotten egg ever again in your lifetime are about zip, still, that one experience will ever after rise to consciousness whenever you bake. 

 

How many rotten eggs would you have to get before you believed that every egg was rotten? How many positive and lasting effects would you have to see before you believe that you matter? There’s a sign on the counter in Tillie’s vet’s office that says that one un-spayed female cat and her offspring can produce 350,000 cats in seven years. In a similar vein, I remember reading somewhere, something about the estimated difference it would make in the future of humanity if every person did one more small life-affirming thing a day, something as simple as smiling at a stranger. That makes 6.7 billion more positive effects each day. Imagine the world that these sheer numbers of kindness and compassion and their effects could produce on the planet. 

 

Walsh didn’t mention this, but while the past is completely settled, and while we can influence only what will happen in the future, there is another thing that is positively settled...that is, the fact that we will die. That matter is completely settled. I find it fascinating, and perhaps predictable, that we mortals are so fixated on immortality. Our experience, over and over and over again, is that people die. We might rail against it mightily, but so far, no one has been able to change that reality. 

 

The Easter story is really quite incredible...that one story of immortality could exponentially create a belief in eternal life in millions of people. It is told to have happened once, and like one egg burst into a shower of glitter, it has deeply changed the lives of those who believe it to be true. 

 

I happen to believe that the Easter story was meant to be a metaphor, a way to explain a painful loss of a beloved leader. Jesus died, just as everyone dies, and those he had touched experienced a fierce need to keep his teachings and presence alive. Certainly a grave could not confine such greatness. Certainly his followers had to hope that this time, with this life, it would be different. And yet, I believe that making Jesus’ life a miracle, steals from him, and from us, the reality of simple human agency. The story, as it’s been told, implies that no ordinary person could make such a difference. And, hidden within is the lie that our lives don’t really matter. Is hope, then, reserved only for those who believe in miracles? 

 

Oh, what a conundrum we’re in. We are privileged in so many ways. We have the resources to affect change. We are in a position to create corrective, positive relationships with those who are broken and who have lost hope. We are presented in almost every moment with the opportunity to make a difference, in the life of another person, in the health of the environment, in the well-being of our own souls.   And yet, many of us live with a nagging fear that who we are and what we do will have no lasting effect, that the planet is spinning toward destruction more quickly than we can run. We’ve lost hope. And with it, we’ve lost a sincerely held belief that we matter.   

 

And yet, while mattering is often thought to be tied to measureable effects, it really is much more than that. To be of worth, without question or merit, is the powerful promise of life itself. Just the fact of your existence has brought meaning and joy into the life of countless people and added a degree of richness to the diversity of existence... and you didn’t have to really DO anything.   Mary Oliver, again, has written a great poem called “The Buddha’s Last Instruction” in which she simultaneously experiences an incredible sunrise, and reflects on the teaching that the Buddha’s last words were “make of yourself a light.” Here she is surrounded by a world beyond her understanding, standing in the midst of the most powerful expression of light that we know, and wondering what it could mean to “make of yourself a light.” She writes: “And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills, like a million flowers on fire – clearly I’m not needed, yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value.”

 

I am not needed...and I am of incomprehensible value. Isn’t this our reality? Life has come to us, through us, and surrounds us in such a way as to suggest that our imprint and effect is of no consequence. Yet at the same time we wonder, with deep appreciation, at the miracle of life, and that we are so blessed as to have this experience.   Look around this room. Think of your friends and families. Imagine all the people who make it possible for you smile and to eat and work and learn and get health care. How could they not matter? How could you not matter? 

 

Hope is not an inane belief in something that’s unlikely to happen; rather it provides the motivation to make whatever difference we can. Hope rises from the memory of and appreciation for all the experiences we’ve had that come to us by the hand and presence of another...a friend, a teacher, a pet, a parent, a casual acquaintance, a stranger, a savior. Hope is actively passing these gifts on for the benefit others. 

 

I loved the quote that Ben referenced last week that says that with the birth of each child, we get another chance. Restated, we could say that with each moment, we get another chance to live fully into the reality that we matter. Truly, death can have no sting. As long as life continues, there will be mysteries too marvellous to understand. As long as life continues, the story of the world is still being told. May we look and see and bow our heads in astonishment. 

Amen.   

 

 

“Resurrection. The reversal of what was thought to be absolute. The turning of midnight into dawn, hatred into love, dying into living anew.

If we look more closely into life, we will find that resurrection is more than hope, it is our experience. The return to life from death is something we understand at our innermost depths, something we feel on the surface of our tender skin. We have come back to life, not only when we start to shake off a shroud of sorrow that has bound us, but when we begin to believe... in all that is still, endlessly possible. 

We give thanks for all those times we have arisen from the depths or simply taken a tiny step toward something new. May we be empowered by extraordinary second chances. And as we enter the world anew, let us turn the tides of despair into endless waves of hope.”

 

So may it be. Go now, and bless the world with your presence.