First Parish Cohasset

“Life and Death”

A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
January 31, 2010
(delivered extemporaneously, so much of what is written below was not spoken,
and some of what was spoken is not written below)

Life and Death, a small topic, no…an intimate topic, yes…a topic that reaches into every human heart. From the youngest to the eldest, life and death hold all the “big questions.” How did I get here? What am I doing here? What do I want to do? What can I do? How can I be? What happened before I was here? Will I really die? How will it happen? Will I be missed? What do I want to leave behind? What do I hope for after death? Is there life after death? What will it be like?

“Religion….our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die,” so said my late friend and mentor and a minister to us all, Forrest Church. Forrest breathed his last the day after his 61st birthday this past September.

Yesterday in this very space we celebrated the life of a much-loved member of this community. Two years ago, there was no inkling that cancer was about to make a fatal call. It did. It came with a vengeance. We lost her.

Just a week ago we marked the first anniversary of the loss of another woman, a young woman dear to this congregation. For so long she had struggled and suffered. For so long her loving husband cared for her and did all he could. Her frail frame could no longer fight the illness that claimed her. It was time to let go. We lost her.

     “We laugh, we cry, we live, we die;
     We dance, we sing our song.”

So it is for each of us. It’s almost bearable when we do it together….when we laugh and cry and live and die and dance and sing as religious community holding faith and wonder that we are here at all.

Sunday after Sunday we share our joys and sorrows, the fiber of our being together. We speak, we listen, we hold silence, and today we’re lighting candles again….bringing our joys and sorrows into caring community. In sharing from your heart, you spoke of life and death.

[Weave in the shared offerings of joys and sorrows.]

You brought into our worship what holds life and death and what transcends life and death. Some of us call it God. Some of us call it Spirit of Life. Perhaps we can all agree that love, love above all holds life and death and transcends both. Love lives. Love is eternal.

I am among the luckiest people in the world. My mother loved me. She gave me the most important of gifts—birth, life, love, and a graceful death—her death, not mine, or maybe it’s mine too. This past Christmas was the first Christmas of my life without Mom. How to celebrate birth, even a birth that rocked us like the birth of a baby in a stable in a lonely corner of the Middle East 2000 or so years ago? How to celebrate birth when your very own Mary, your very own Mommy, isn’t here anymore? Well, I cried. Even though at times I felt I had no right to cry, because my Mother had lived a hundred years. That’s a long life, and it’s the blink of an eye.

We were ready for her to go. A wonderful birthday party just over a year ago brought our whole family together. We blew up balloons. We wore funny hats. We toasted her with champagne and chocolate. She was present and aware and told us some amazing stories about her life that we’d never heard before.

We parted with hugs and kisses. Mom had made it so far. She had summoned whatever adrenaline was necessary. Then, in a matter of weeks, dementia came to call—not an easy visitor. Decline was rapid and not without struggle. In October, we got a call from our niece that “Gram” was in the hospital and her vital signs weren’t good. A quick trip on the Acela to Philadelphia and then to Bryn Mawr Hospital, where my niece, Tenny, and I sat on either side of Mom as her breathing was labored and her consciousness dim. A hundred years old! She was ready.

“Walk with me, Jesus,” was the comfort that she wanted as she let go. She had told me so a few years earlier. The 23rd Psalm was her favorite. Most of it I remembered from childhood, as I held her hand and stroked her forehead…

     “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
     He makes me lie down in green pastures;
     He leads me beside still waters.
     He restores my soul……”

Then…..what comes next? “Wait,” said Tenny, digging out her Blackberry. “I’ll Google it.” So with my high-tech niece on the other side of my Mom, her Gram, together we spoke the 23rd Psalm, hoping she would feel a comforting Jesus walking with her through “the valley of the shadow.” Whatever she took in, whatever was comforting her, we were a unit, loving our Mother and Grandmother across a passage that we too will make. It’s inevitable.

When your mother is dying, you might not think about giving her news about what’s happening with the family, but there was good news to share. I don’t know if she received it, but I trust that she felt it in the bones of her soul. “Mom, you’re going to have a sixth great-grandchild in May. Sarah and Robb are pregnant.” I knew how much it would mean to our daughter, Sarah, that her Gram got this news before she died. I knew that if Mom were fully conscious it would mean so much to her. Life and death and life were full circle.

Her breaths became deeper and the intervals longer, but she was peaceful, so peaceful. Then….that very last breath, a sigh, a long deep sigh. Tenny and I looked at each other. The tears rolled. She was somewhere else, not here, definitely not here. We didn’t know where, just not here. We called my brother, Tenny’s Dad. Jeff and Donna were in the Middle East, and at the moment of Mom’s death, they were in the ancient city of Petra, in the Valley of the Tombs. I’ve been there. But now I was here. Perhaps we were in the same sacred space, a space inspiring awe and marked by the sure promise of life at its outset…the promise of death.

As I look at your faces this morning, I know that so many of you have lost mothers and fathers, some of you have lost husbands or wives, and some of you have lost children. You know grief. You also know the joy of the love you shared, the love you gave, the love you received. Would you trade for a second the love you knew to escape the grief of losing your loved one into a mystery more vast than any of us here have yet experienced?

We’re born. We live. We die. And then…we don’t know…it’s a mystery. It’s a mystery where we were if we were before we were born. All we can know for sure is that we’re alive now, and that’s a miracle. The odds that any of us are here are overwhelmingly against us being here. All the ancestors coupling across generations, all the possible couplings of sperm and egg, the odds are so against us being here, being who we are, being alive. But here we are, a miracle. My friend Forrest called it “the miracle sandwich,” a miracle sandwiched between two great mysteries. All we know for sure is the miracle.

Actually, we know one more thing. We know that we lose those we love, and one day they will lose us, but what doesn’t die is the love. Even when our names are forgotten, the love, like some crazy kind of DNA, lives on from generation to generation. Not just generations of humanity connected by bloodlines, but through friends and passing strangers on into the future as long as humankind survives itself. Love lasts. It’s eternal. Love given, love received, love shared. Life and death would be opposites were it not for love.

So hold silence for a moment. Close your eyes. Open your hearts. Breathe it in. You’re alive. There’s still time. Breathe it in. Breathe in the love. And then, let it go, let it go into the heart of the person sitting next to you…into the hearts of the folks easy to love…into the hearts of the folks hard to love…into the universe. Let it go. Let the love flow as we all join the hands of our hearts in knowing that we will each and all one day draw our final breath and then let it go into the breath, the spirit, of all who have ever lived, beyond time and space, breath beyond breath, love beyond life and death.

I love you each and all, I do.   Amen.

Sources:

Forrest Church, Love and Death: My Journey Through the Valley of the Shadow, Beacon Press, Boston, 2008.

Psalm 23, The Book of Psalms, The Bible (Revised Standard Version)

“We Laugh, We Cry,” Words and music: Shelley Jackson Denham (1950 – ), in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 354.

Chalice Reflection
of
Martha Jackmauh

“A Different Way
We shall overcome some day!”
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
January 17, 2010 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday

“I have a Dream” were the words that contained great insight that Dr. Martin Luther King frequently used to begin many of his speeches. His mind was enlightened because of his vast experiences and observations on many levels that brought him to speak out against human suffering. Many of the problems he addressed, of course, were those of racial and national conflicts.

He spoke of a Higher Consciousness whereby humans would be encouraged to face the reality that human suffering was caused by their lack of responsibility and awareness of their actions.

Reactive behavior and thoughtlessness are based on fear, pride, power, ego and greed…..all of which become an insatiable appetite and whereby people will do anything to anyone to maintain these horrific addictions.

Martin Luther King was an Evolutionary-Revolutionary…….one who was not afraid to speak his well-learned TRUTHS……and to pay the price.

We humans are part of nature and if you observe nature closely, you will see the same hostile behavior in order to protect their territories and species. This is reactive behavior for mere survival at the most fundamental levels.

Humans, of course, have these similar traits and when they ran out of resources, they would invade other territories and kill other humans. Then evolution proceeded from caves to the empire state building and wars have continued from stones to nuclear weapons. Because of these actions, the suffering goes on from generation to generation.

WHERE ARE WE NOW?
A DIFFERENT WAY!
WILL WE CHOSE TOTAL DESTRUCTION OR WAKE UP?

About twenty years ago I read the writings of an American Indian Chief, and he stated that the Afro-Americans would raise the consciousness of American Culture.

Thanks, in part, to Martin Luther King, we have an African-American Governor and President. “The times they are a changing.” After each of these elections, I had the privilege to take a bus to Cape Cod, walk around Hull and Boston and the African Americans I encountered would look deeply into my eyes….and I would look deeply back into their eyes and smile from my elated spirit……and…….likewise, their spirit shone back. A strong connection I did feel. I had never seen such peace and self-confidence radiate from them to such an extent before.

“WE SHALL OVERCOME SOME DAY”
“AND THE DAYS HAVE ARRIVED”

Fortunately, there are many groups of conscious people meeting together regarding the many levels of our human struggles and they are attempting to find ways to uplift all humans from the many places of deprivation and suffering, as well as the destruction of the planet.

Thank you to all the Evolutionary Revolutionaries……without weapons…..instead…..using their gifts of consciousness.

“A Different Way”

A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
January 17, 2010

Haiti is uppermost in the minds and hearts of us all—Haiti, the island nation to the south, its history so intimately linked with that of our own nation. This morning I invite us all to pray the prayer of Mother Theresa:

“May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.”

We usually don’t pray for a broken heart, but at this time when so many lives are broken, when an entire nation is rent asunder, how can our hearts not break? And if our hearts break, let’s hope that what fills that fault line is love, prayers of love, deeds of love, and the hard truths that only love will allow us to bear.

On this morning that we celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., just think. He couldn’t have done what he did if his heart hadn’t broken. He couldn’t have done what he did if the broken space of his heart hadn’t filled with love, including the hard truths that love called him to witness and preach.

Four days before King was murdered, he spoke at Washington, DC’s National Cathedral. His words span the decades:

“We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

Not so different from the words we sang just moments ago:

“Our world is one world: what touches one affects us all.”

In the 1960s, the tumultuous 60s, Dr. King decried racism, he led marches, he led sit-ins, he was arrested 30 times. In circles of power, he enjoyed all the popularity of an Old Testament prophet, a thorn in the side of the status quo. But his voice chafed even more so when he began speaking out against an unjust war, and when he linked racism and the unjust war of his day to economic disparity, and when he linked economic disparity to the scourge of poverty. Imagine how his words of that not so long ago Sunday landed in the laps of a probably not completely adoring congregation nestled into the pews of that great cathedral in our nation’s capital:

“We are challenged to rid our nation and the world of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, poverty spreads its nagging, prehensile tentacles into hamlets and villages all over our world.”

No band-aids for Dr. King. Only abolition would do—abolition of racism, abolition of war, abolition of poverty. All are variations of violence. King sought a different way. His vision was peace and mutuality. His means were nonviolent resistance—not nonviolent passivity, but nonviolent resistance. His models were Jesus and Gandhi.

We can’t presume to know how Dr. King would have responded to what is happening in Haiti, but we can learn from his teachings and his life. Haiti is a cataclysm of nature; it is a catastrophe of economic disparity.

How is it that Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere but the second oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere? On December 5, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on the island and promptly called it La Isla Española (“the Spanish Island”). We commonly hear the term Hispaniola to refer to the entire island—what is now the Dominican Republic and the Republic of Haiti. Wave upon wave of colonial oppression followed, layered with wave upon wave of indigenous resistance. The French turned it into a slave colony; the slaves revolted, and on January 1, 1804, independence was declared, with Haiti as the name resurrected for this new republic, an indigenous name meaning “Land of Mountains.”

Unlike our own nation, slavery in Haiti was abolished as independence was proclaimed. Events in Haiti inspired abolitionists in this country while chafing the white privilege that has fueled our shameful history of slavery and racism. These realities, coupled with Haiti’s rich natural resources, positioned Haiti for long-term abuse by U.S. leadership, with only a few exceptions.

There are grounds humanitarian and historic for our nation to respond with generosity of spirit and resources to the crisis that is Haiti. This “Land of Mountains” that is home to 9 million neighbors is suffering fracture upon fracture. Economic disparity among nations is nowhere more acute than between Haiti and the United States. How this came about calls for all of us to do some heavy homework. In the meantime, we hear the cries of a people buried in rubble and crumpled in an infrastructure that gasps for breath.

We can act. From the core of our faith, we can act—and many of you already have—with an outpouring of generosity and justice. Within a day of the first horrific tremors, our Unitarian Universalist Association joined forces with our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, seasoned by decades of human rights work, including disaster responses to the events of 9/11, the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake in Pakistan. As a justice organization, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee partners with grassroots organizations in the venue of the disaster. The intent is to reach the most marginalized and to complement the massive aid programs launched by larger emergency response organizations. I invite you to read the insert that you’ll find in your order of service to learn more about the UUSC approach.

Thanks to the leadership of our Outreach Committee and the full support of our Parish Committee president and your minister, our non-pledge offering this morning and next Sunday will be dedicated wholly to the UUSC/UUA Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund. Beginning in February and stretching through August, our 25% non-pledge plate offering will go to this fund.

In the spirit of Dr. King, our Unitarian Universalist Association and our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee offer a different way to give. There are many ways, and I honor each of them. There are many channels through which to do what we can to relieve the suffering, and I commend each of them. I am grateful that our president has committed at least $100 million to the Haitian relief effort. I am grateful that he has granted temporary protected status for 18 months to the estimated 100,000 Haitians who are in this country illegally and to the 30,000 Haitians who were facing deportation back to Haiti. I am heartened that so many in this nation and other nations of the world are reaching out with funds and expertise as the horrors of Haiti continue to unfold.

But I hearken back to the lessons of Dr. King. Crushing poverty, like the crush of the earth itself, is systemic and calls for a response of partnership over the long haul. It calls for generosity, yes. It calls also for us to learn about this island nation whose history and fate are so linked with our own. It calls for us to become informed advocates on behalf of practices and policies that will not just restore what was—and God knows in Haiti that was awful enough—but that will embody solidarity with the Haitian people.

Can we “let our hearts break so completely that the whole world falls in?” Can we fill those fractures with love that is just and lasting? As we ponder our gifts, I invite us to hear the words of my friend and colleague, Rev. Robbie Walsh.

Did you ever think there might be a fault line
passing underneath your living room:
A place in which your life is lived in meeting
and in separating, wondering
and telling, unaware that just beneath
you is the unseen seam of great plates
that strain through time? And that your life, already
spilling over the brim, could be invaded,
sent off in a new direction, turned
aside by forces you were warned about
but not prepared for? Shelves could be spilled out,
the level floor set at an angle in
some seconds’ shaking. You would have to take
your losses, do whatever must be done
next.

When the great plates slip
and the earth shivers and the flaw is seen
to lie in what you trusted most, look not
to more solidity, to weighty slabs
of concrete poured or strength of cantilevered
beam to save the fractured order. Trust
more the tensile strands of love that bend
and stretch to hold you in the web of life
that’s often torn but always healing. There’s
your strength. The shifting plates, the restive earth,
your room, your precious life, they all proceed
from love, the ground on which we walk together.

Amen.

Sources:

Vanessa Buschschluter, BBC News, Washington, “Troubled history: Haiti and US,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8460185.stm, January 16, 2010.

David James Duncan, “Let the Whole World Fall In,” Orion Magazine, July/August 2005.

“History of Haiti,” from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Haiti.

Naomi Klein, “Aristide in Exile,” The Nation, August 1, 2005.

“Our World Is One World,” Words and music: Cecily Taylor (1930 – ), in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 134.

Julia Preston, “Haitians Illegally in U.S. Given Protected Status,” Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, “Conditions remain critical in Haiti,” The New York Times, January 15, 2010.

http://www.uusc.org/content/conditions_remain_critical_haiti, January 15, 2010.

Robert R. Walsh, “Fault Line,” from Noisy Stones: A Meditation Manual, Skinner House Books, 1992.

In light of the recent devastation in Haiti atop the wrenching poverty of this island nation, many of us are asking, “What can we do?”  This letter from Dr. Charle Clements, President and CEO of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (“UUSC”), tells us how we can help alleviate the suffering.  I urge you to read it and give as generously as you can to the UUA/UUSC Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund.   To learn more, visit www.uusc.org. 

Our hearts break open .   May our generosity follow.   Please note that the 25% of our non-pledge plate offering, February through August, will support the UUA/UUSC Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund, as agreed upon by our Outreach Committee. 

Together let us hold hope and be hope,

Jan

—————————————————-

Dear Friends,UUSC and the Unitarian Universalist Association have launched a joint earthquake relief fund to help the survivors of the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12.The magnitude 7.0 earthquake centered near Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The situation is chaotic, communications systems are down, and debris impedes movement around the city. The U.N. estimates that 2.2 million people are affected and fears that the loss of life may reach into the tens of thousands.Please donate now — your generous support will help us help the people of Haiti recover from this disaster.Major news outlets are all reporting severe devastation, with extensive damage to hospitals, roads, water and sanitation services, and electrical and communication systems. An alarming number of buildings, including the National Palace and the United Nation’s Headquarters, have collapsed. Haiti is the Western Hemisphere’s most impoverished and least-developed nation. Its society is rife with radical inequality, where large numbers of the population are systematically left out. Eighty percent of the population lives in poverty. These are the very people likely to suffer the most during this crisis. Your generous donation to the UUSC/UUA Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund will help ensure that the most marginalized people in Haiti are able to access aid. Many people live day-to-day on what they’re able to earn in the informal sector. For those hundreds of thousands of poor people in Port-au-Prince, the daily struggle for food, water, and medical attention already amounted to an emergency — the earthquake has made these challenges infinitely more difficult to overcome, creating a humanitarian disaster on top of an existing humanitarian crisis.      Please give as generously as you can — help ensure that the most marginalized people of Haiti recover from this devastating disaster. Sincerely,   Charlie Clements President & CEO       689 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 02139-3302 Ph: 617-868-6600 Fax: 617-868-7102 Copyright © 2010 All rights reserved.

First Parish Unitarian Universalist Cohasset

E-mail Update – January 5, 2010

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow….

A controversial invitation indeed, but as with every other controversial statement from your minister, you know that you need not agree with me.   This magical stuff that floats out of the sky carries its share of treachery, but it carries also a medium of beauty for an otherwise dreary January landscape.    Some hardy souls made it to church this past Sunday, and I do hope that this winter’s snowfall finds a balance permitting all of you to be here as we renew our worship life in the New Year.

Echoing the sentiment shared in the all-parish retreat this past autumn, our children will join us for the first segment of every service.  We’ll then sing them out to their RE classes, which now extend to 11:15.  This allows them to retain their worship circle, now at the conclusion of their classes, and permits the rest of us ample time to make our way to the Parish House for refreshments and fellowship after our worship concludes.

May our vision and actions ever be fresh, our minds resilient, and our hearts open as we worship across generations and preferences and joys and concerns.   I invite us all into the most caring community we can muster, a circle of caring that never stops stretching the fiber of our souls, which is so wondrously elastic.

Love to each of you as we greet the New Year,

Jan

Jan’s Jury Duty!

Beginning Tuesday, January 5, I have jury duty in Brockton, from 8 AM to 4 PM.   Writing this on Monday evening, January 4, I have no idea how long it will last, but I’ll be working at home from 6-9 PM every night that I’m just being a citizen during daylight hours.   If you need to reach me, please give me a call at 781-383-1100.  I’ll check messages regularly.  Or e-mail me at JCarlssonb@aol.com.  I’ll check my e-mail in the evening.   Come Sunday I’ll give you an update!

Jan

Thank you from Mark Alves & the Outreach Committee

I wanted to take a moment to say thank you for your assistance with the South Shore Friends of the Homeless gift program.  Your generosity was extremely helpful and will make a difference in a family’s Christmas this year.  As you know the need was greater this year than in years past.  Dorothy Newell, the founder of SSFH, sends her deepest gratitude for your generosity and support, and wishes you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Thank you,

for the Outreach Committee

Ushers & Flower Providers Needed for several January Sundays

What does January 10, 17, or 31 look like for you?  Might you be free and willing to usher and provide flowers as we worship together?   It’s a wonderful way to connect with folks you know and greet friends you don’t yet know.  It’s a gracious way to adorn the chancel of our beautiful Meeting House.   If you can help out, please phone or e-mail Sandy Bailey at 781-383-1100 or sbailey@firstparishcohaset.org or sign up on the poster/chart during Coffee Hour.

The events of this week are as follows:

This Week

Monday, January 4

9:45 AM – Property Committee – Atkinson Room

10:00 AM – Staff Meeting (usually on Tuesdays)

Thursday, January 7

7:55 PM – Choir Rehearsal – Meeting House

Sunday, January 10

8:00 AM – Circle Ministry (group led by Bill Baird & John Kornet and meeting on the 2^nd & 4^th Sundays)

9:45 AM – Childcare for our youngest.  All other children will worship in the Meeting House for the first part of the service and will then leave for RE classes, which now extend until 11:15 AM.  The Our Whole Lives (OWL) class meets at 9:45 AM at First Parish UU in Scituate. 

Everyone is invited for refreshments and fellowship in the Parish House right after worship.

10:00 AM – Worship in the Meeting House – Message: “Snow Upon Snow”

Everyone is invited for refreshments and fellowship in the Parish House right after worship.

4:00 PM – Circle Ministry Facilitators – Minister’s study

Please note:

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday

We’ll honor the life and legacy of Dr. King in our worship on Sunday, January 17, and in our larger community with the Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Breakfast on Monday, January 18, at 9 AM at the Second Congregational Church, Cohasset.   This is co-sponsored by the Cohasset Clergy and the Cohasset Diversity Committee.

Guest at Your Table Gifts Due on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday, January 17

These “guests” that sit in cardboard box mode on the tables of our homes are hopefully being fed with funds that support the ministries of our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.   For details, please see our January newsletter, The Common, p. 11.   You can pick one up in the vestibule of the Meeting House or the entrance of the Parish House if you didn’t receive yours on-line or in the mail.

Voice Your Opinion Because You Can!

Are you a member of First Parish Unitarian Universalist?  Then you’re also part of extended family known as the Unitarian Universalist Association and have the opportunity to participate in the vibrant social witness process of our UUA.  Note the segment in the January newsletter, The Common, under Our UU World.   There you’ll read about the Congregational Poll.   On the Bulletin Board in the Parish House, you’ll find all you need to make your voice known about how First Parish UU should cast its votes re: the social justice issues to be considered at our UUA’s General Assembly in June.   It’s all part of living the principle that calls us to affirm, “justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.”   Let your voice be known, because you can!    Deadline to do so is January 17^th!

In case of snow

In case of snow in such abundance that it makes church a life-threatening prospect, there will be a message accessible on our church phone at “Sunday services and other current information” at 781-383-1100, ext. 1.  It will be posted by 7 AM of the Sunday in question.

For more information on activities at First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Cohasset, refer to our December newsletter, The Common, and to our website at www.firstparishcohasset.org.

“Snow Upon Snow”

A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
January 10, 2010

Look out the windows. Take a moment or so and just look out the windows of this Meeting House. Snow…snow upon snow blankets the Common. It envelops us as we gather to worship this morning. We see it; we walk through it; we shovel it; some of us ski on it; all of us slide on it; and if you add a cup of sugar, a tablespoon of vanilla extract, and two cups of milk to a gallon of the fluffy white stuff, you’ll get snow ice cream. But have you ever heard it?

Have you ever heard snow,

asks poet Alan Harris,

Not the howling wind of a blizzard,
not the crackling of snow underfoot,
but the actual falling of snow?

…the gentle fall
of snow on snow.
No wind, no sound
but the snow.

Our senses tingle as we walk through it. We bend and scoop up a handful. How quickly it melts, from a cluster of exquisite crystals to a cool bath in our hands. From something to something else to seemingly nothing, like each of us. We’re born, we grow, and ideally we age and mature, and then we die—that is, we morph into some other what and who knows where? Like the snow, we are sound and substance between silence, mysterious breathtaking silence.

The first snowfall is winter’s first show stopper. It came for us barely a week before Christmas, bringing to a halt a much anticipated children’s pageant and holiday concert. Like a heavenly host that tolerates no competition, such a snowfall commands our full attention. For awhile it’s the only act.

What is it, this stuff of winter, this stuff that plays with our plans even as it awakens our senses?

As a young boy growing up in North Dakota, Kenneth Libbrecht asked this question early on, and he kept asking all the way into his adult life work, the physics of snow. Libbrecht explains that what we commonly call a snowflake is actually a snow crystal,

“a single crystal of ice. A snowflake,” on the other hand, “is a more general term that can mean an individual snow crystal, a cluster of snow crystals that form together, or even a large aggregate of snow crystals that collide and stick in midair, falling to earth in a flimsy puffball. Snow crystals are commonly called snowflakes…like calling a tulip a flower.”

To use the generic term snowflake, each holds a story and a structure that intrigues the scientific mind and stretches the spiritual imagination.

Snowflakes branch only in multiples of three, with six branches forming the most common pattern, though there are also three or twelve-branch snowflakes. There are even snowflakes structured in needle-like columns, with the basic form being a hexagonal column of ice, like a plain wooden pencil. How does this all happen? Each snowflake tells a birth story.

“….water vapor in the air condenses directly into solid ice. As more vapor condenses onto a nascent snow crystal, the crystal grows and develops, and this is when its elaborate patterning emerges….From nothing more than the simple act of water condensing into ice.”

As you and I are different yet human, so each snowflake is distinct yet snow. Its distinctiveness lies in the crystal, in the arrangement of branches and ridges and more or less symmetry. “It could snow day and night until the sun dies before two snow crystals would be exactly, precisely alike,” remarks Libbrecht.

Yet all snowflakes share a common fate. Each fallen snowflake gives up its wondrous shape in a matter of minutes, sometimes seconds, and joins the grand assembly of ice lumps. The snow we behold outside these windows is fallen snow, a grand communion of clumped crystals that melt, lending moisture to the earth below, nurturing roots that even now work toward springtime.

Distinctive, singular, transitory, is the story of the snowflake. Distinctive, singular, transitory is the story of each of us. The promise lies in the communion of all the snowflakes that have fallen melting into a legacy of blessing for what will be.

Magical, mystical, and fickle is the stuff of snow.

How magical it is. In a journal entry, Henry David Thoreau remarked:

“How full of creative genius is the air in which these [snowflakes] are generated! I should hardly admire them more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat.”

How mystical it is. Winter became mentor for the late Phillip Simmons. For ten years this father and husband and professor of literature and hiker and climber lived with the debilitating advance of ALS, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. His native New Hampshire served him well. It was there that he spent his last precious years with his wife and young children and where he refined the art of what he called “Learning to Fall.” Slowly but steadily he moved into what he called “winter mind,” culled from the poetry of Wallace Stevens.

“One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves….”

“To be of winter mind,” wrote Simmons, “is to be so empty of preconception as to hear without judgment and thus to hear in that wind neither misery nor happiness….Lying in the snow, I let my body cool, my breath slow, my mind empty of thoughts… All separateness falls away, and I am one with snow and stars, rooted as pine, imperturbable as stone.”

How fickle it is. In “The Gods of Winter,” a poetic tale of a quiet night, David Gioia describes

“Storm on storm, snow on drifting snowfall,
shifting its shape, flurrying in moonlight,
bright and ubiquitous,
….The world is annihilated and remade
with only us as witnesses.

Briefest of joys, our life together,
this brittle flower twisting toward the light
even as it dies, no more permanent for being perfect….”

Magical is the life we are living, our birth, our breath. Mystical is our oneness with all life. Fickle is the bargain made at birth, that the sure progression of life is toward its end as we know it. Yet we are each as distinctive as a snowflake. There has never been a you or I. There will never be another you or I. Singular I am; singular you are. We know aloneness. We know ourselves apart. And we share a common humanity. We are in community. Like descending snowflakes, like Philip Simmons, we “learn” soon enough to fall. We’re ephemeral, transitory, a descending ice crystal, a falling star.

Grace comes in the wonder that we are here at all. Grace comes in the wonder that we are each as likely to find our double as a snowflake is to meet its perfect twin. Grace comes in the wonder that we do let go, must let go, and become one with the earth and sky and each other.

So look again out these windows; behold the snow. And with the next snowfall, go outside, stand in it, walk through it, and listen. Listen to the snow. Listen to the silence of the snow flying, falling, drifting, dying, perfect and beautiful, one with all that is. Amen.

Sources:

David Gioia, “The Gods of Winter,” in The Gods of Winter: Poems by David Gioia, Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1991.

Alan Harris, “Listening to Christmas,” http://www.alharris.com/holidays/listxmas.htm.

Kenneth Libbrecht (text) and Patricia Rasmussen, (photography), The Snowflake, Winter’s Secret Beauty, Voyageur Press, Stillwater, MN, 2003.

David Reich, “in memoriam: Phillip Simmons,” UU World, November/December 2002.

Phillip Simmons, Learning to Fall, The Blessings of An Imperfect Life, Bantam Books, 2002.

Philip Simmons, “Winter Mind,” UUWorld, January/February 2001, 32-37.

Snow Ice Cream II, http://allrecipes.com/recipe/snow-ice-cream-ii/detail.aspx

Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man,” from Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1954.

Henry David Thoreau, from The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, Vol. 8, 87-8.