First Parish Cohasset

“Lives Celebrated, Living Remembered”

An Invitation to Celebrating and Remembering
on Memorial Day Sunday
by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
May 30, 2010

It may sound strange, but as a minister I find the process of planning a memorial service immensely gratifying. Not because someone died, though we all will. Not because I speak with family and friends of the deceased in the intimacy of their grieving, though we have all been there in the land of grief. Rather because I receive from family and friends a treasure of stories of a life lived and living remembered. The memorial service that unfolds is a celebration of that life through those stories. Almost always there is laughter as well as tears; sometimes there is relief over pain ended; and sometimes there is shock over a life ended abruptly.

I remember as a young child the first memorial service I experienced. I had no knowledge of death; I was barely born myself. I just knew that my Great Uncle Joe had done something my family called “dying.” So being the curious child I was, I wondered: what did this mean? And then, why was my Aunt Annie crying all the time? And then, why didn’t Uncle Joe get up? Why did he just lie there? Those were the days and that was a culture of beholding the remains of the one who had died. As for me, I just stared, fascinated. I had no clue that death is as natural as birth, not a clue, or that memory was how we kept that person alive in our hearts.

Then there was the loss of animals, family pets. Soon enough, I was part of a neighborhood funeral team—kids who staged the most elaborate of celebrations for a beloved cat or dog who had been hit by a car, or even for a cherished goldfish whom we perhaps forgot to feed or fed too much or just died of old age. When my daughter, Sarah, and her friend Kristen produced such a ceremony, it was high church, so to speak. A goldfish had died. So these two eight-year-olds earnestly planned how to memorialize Flipper. They wore their finest party dresses, then presided over a “goldfish communion” – goldfish crackers, as you can imagine, and grape juice. Interestingly, neither of them had been exposed to communion in their young lives. They just went ahead confident that they were paying proper tribute to their beloved Flipper. Chairs were set up in our backyard, and the rest of us were proper mourners at this memorable rite of passage.

Celebrating a life lived—human or otherwise—allows us to hone in on the meaning of that creature’s life through the heart-felt reflections and stories and anecdotes of those of us who were closest to the one we have lost.

Just this past week, we lost a long-time member of this congregation. At the age of 91, Lou Eaton left this life as we know it. On Saturday afternoon, June 12th at 2 PM in this Meeting House, I’ll preside at a celebration of Lou’s life. Lou is an exemplar of why I find such a rite of passage so gratifying. The varied facets of his life weave a many-splendored web, so complex, so luminous, that I hope each of you who attend this service will walk away knowing more of Lou than you had when you arrived. It will be a weaving of stories from many sources. Yet the whole is inevitably greater than the sum of those stories, for the whole speaks of a life lived in all its complexity, with all its strands—many of them unknowable even to daughters and spouses and dear friends who knew him well.

So it is with each of us as we celebrate on this Memorial Day Sunday lives once vibrant in our midst and living remembered. In the words of Steve Smith:

“Each of us has a thousand, a million tendrils of
other souls wrapped
around us and through us.
And this is who we are to ourselves.”

In the spirit of this circle of sharing, I invite you to come forward, light a candle as long as the candles last; and when they give out, light a virtual candle. Come forward in silence if you will and light your candle. Come forward in voice if you will, tell us your name—please, tell us your name—and share briefly please a story of a life celebrated and remembered.

Sources:

Steven F. Smith, “A Little Piece of Our Souls,” in How We Are Called: A Meditation Anthology, Mary Benard and Kirstie Anderson, Editors, Skinner House Books, Boston, 2003, 43-45.

First Parish Unitarian Universalist Cohasset

E-mail Update – May 19, 2010

One of my favorite objects is a kaleidoscope.   From childhood on, I couldn’t resist the appeal of this “toy” that holds tiny slivers of color shifting into pattern after pattern, like an infinite series of stained glass windows.   Kaleidoscopes speak to me: “Change is wondrous.  Behold it.  Let it be.  Move with it.  Flex it as you will, with a mere turn of the wrist.”   Transformation is in the eye of the beholder—its beauty and otherwise.

You and I are amid not just transition of role and relationship; we are amid the eternal transition that simply is.   As Dan and I beheld our newborn grandson this past week, little Forrest’s trusting fragility recalled that of little Oliver just over two years ago.   Within a seeming nanosecond, he will sit up, turn over, giggle, cry with even greater gusto, crawl, stand, walk, run, and on it goes given good health and good fortune.   Love and care provide the foundation for Forrest and Oliver and for us all.

Amid the change that we know every nanosecond of our living, may our foundation be love and care, love and care for each other and love and care beyond each other into a world hurting so badly from their lack.   In loving justice, may we move ahead, finding ourselves like the patterns of the kaleidoscope, in a web of intricate patterns that is different because of a mere breath somewhere in the universe, different because of how we navigate our own twists and turns across transitions conscious and subliminal.

Change is forever.   So is love.   May the change over which we have even the slightest power be infused with all possible love.

Love to all,

Jan

Spring Fling May 22 2010 – 7:30 PM

The Spring Fling promises a lively service auction, splendid refreshments, and entertainment to wow you!   Tickets will be available at the door for $20/couple, $10/person, which entitles you to a glass of wine or beer and yummy sweets; flavored waters will also be available.  You’ll also enjoy an evening of great entertainment and a silent auction with a couple of live auction items.  If you have a donation, please contact Bev Burgess at bevburgess@aol.com.   Think babysitters, soloists, carvers, carpenters, artists, yard workers, caterers, and knitters—for starters.

Allegra Martin notes that performers are still wanted!   If you play an instrument; if you would like to tell a joke; if you have a little humorous monologue or dialogue to share, or even just a memory of a particularly moving or hilarious moment from a past Spring Fling, we want to get you on stage!  Our younger members are particularly encouraged to come up with something inventive.  Allegra wants performances to reflect the talent of the entire congregation, not just the choir, so please volunteer yourself (or someone else) to share a little tidbit with us!  You can reach Allegra at allegra.martin@gmail.com.

NEEDED FOR THIS SUNDAY – USHERS & FLOWER PROVIDERS & COFFEE HOUR HOSTS!

And needed for the balance of May & for June!

Usher/flower openings include: May 23 & 30 and June 13 (ushers only), & 20.  Coffee hour openings include: May 23, & 30 and June 20.

Please contact Sandy Bailey at 781-383-1100 or sbailey@firstparishcohasset.org and let her know what you will do when.  Hospitality is you!   Being there with flowers, a welcoming smile and handshake, coffee and refreshments after worship all matters immensely to how folks feel about us when they worship with us.  Thank you!

The events of this week are as follows:

Tuesday, May 18

10:30 AM – Staff Meeting – Minister’s Study

Thursday, May 20

10:30 AM – 3:00 PM – 175^th Annual Meeting of the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry – First Church in Roxbury

Our delegates this year are Eric Kluz and Chartis Tebbetts.   To learn more about our UU Urban Ministry, visit www.uuum.org.

7:55 PM – Choir Practice – Meeting House

Saturday, May 22

8:00 AM – Carriage House Nursery School Fundraiser – Parish House

7:30 PM – SPRING FLING – Parish House/Trueblood Hall (see above)

Sunday, May 23

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 join their parents and the full congregation for the first part of worship in the Meeting House and then leave for RE classes, which extend to 11:15 AM.   Our Whole Lives (OWL) meets for their final session at 9:45 AM at First Parish UU in Scituate.

10:00 AM – Worship in the Meeting House

Worship will be led by Rev. Dr. Judith Campbell, who will preach on “Doors, Windows, and Black Holes…..Opportunities and Challenges in a Time of Transition.”  Ron Wallace will serve as liturgical host.

Rev. Dr. Campbell was the Unitarian Universalist minister on Martha’s Vineyard for seven years and now serves as the Ministerial Settlement Representative for the Ballou Channing District of the Unitarian Universalist Association.   She is also a retreat and workshop leader locally, nationally, and in Great Britain and is the author of the Olympia Brown mysteries, soon available at bookstores.  Children and youth will be present for the first part of worship.

All are invited for refreshments and fellowship in the Parish House directly after worship.

Jan will be visiting the UU Congregation of the Catskills in Kingston, NY, where she will begin this coming August as interim minister.

What else?

Our Cohasset Food Pantry needs you to help hungry neighbors!  Please contribute.

Economic challenge continues for so many among us and for so many of our neighbors.   Local food pantries provide if we continue to provide for our local food pantries.  We can do this through our Cohasset Food Pantry.  Our Outreach Committee reminds us to keep those baskets in the Meeting House and at the entrance to the Parish House full.   Items needed are posted at both locations.

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.

We have a faith worth sharing and a church worth growing!

Come, and bring your children and your un-churched neighbors!

“Nature, Nurture, whatever…”
A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
Mother’s Day Sunday
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
May 9, 2010

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, the baby or the parent? Which came first, the woman or the man? Well, we all know the answer to this last question. Adam was created from the rib of Eve!

We know too that Eve is the mother of Unitarian Universalism. Who else would refuse to hold back from the prospect of a sumptuous apple offered by one of God’s creatures, each with inherent worth and dignity? Adam followed suit by virtue of the nature transmitted through Eve’s rib and the nurture she imparted once he appeared on the scene. From then on all is history, spotted as it is.

So to the core question of developmental psychology: Is it nature or nurture? Are we human creatures the harvest of what was transmitted genetically or of what was transmitted environmentally? As much time as I spent on this question in graduate academia, I do believe the answer is straightforward. “Yes!” Each of us is an amalgam of our genetic and our environmental legacies. Often it’s hard, if not impossible, to identify those traits biological and psychological that reveal which threads are which. There are surely situations in which it’s helpful to know what our genetic legacy is, however. It’s helpful to have that medical history. Sometimes it’s reassuring, sometimes not; but almost always it’s informative and sometimes, lifesaving. It’s also helpful to be attuned to the cradle of nurture or otherwise from which we have each developed. From neglect and abuse to love and cultivation of caring responsible behavior, we’re each the harvest of how that cradle was rocked.

Many of you know that I have three children—adult daughters. Two are my birth children; one is technically my stepchild, though I’ve raised Lisa since she was nine years old. She still calls me Jan, not Mom, but I commonly refer to her as my daughter. Dan and his first wife, who died when Lisa was 16 months old, adopted Lisa from Korea when she was just four months old. It can be said that Lisa has had three Mothers—a challenge in many ways, a blessing of nurture in others, though the identity of her birth mother is unknown. Mothering and being mothered are in flux for each of us, whether we know the identity of our birth mother or not.

Imagine a stone formed at the mouth of a river. It moves along that river’s course year after year, twisting and turning over rapids and across tranquil pools, tossed and settled and raised and urged on by the inevitable flow. Miles and miles downstream, will that stone be recognizable? In some ways, yes; in some ways, no. It will be the same and different. What transpired upstream and what continues to transpire along the journey matter; but this imperfect metaphor doesn’t account for free will, which is itself exercised in the framework of source and journey.

Were I to ask my own mother—she who gave birth to me and did indeed nurture me— what her opinion is on this matter of nature or nurture, I can only guess what she would say. Her response would emerge from a century of traveling her own life course. In fact, this is my first Mother’s Day without my mother here to ask such questions. I love her and am still not free from the instinct to give her a call, to check in. So what would she say as a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, and a longtime nurse, on this matter? I’ll tell you exactly what she’d say: “Whatever….”

Oh yes, some commentary would follow, but her essential response would be this fluid, resilient expression. Whenever things grew controversial on any issue, this was her response. It’s a response that took shape again when last November, right after Thanksgiving, our entire family gathered at the home of our nephew, Todd, and his family in Vermont. To all her grandchildren, Mom was Gram. To all her great-grandchildren, she was Gigi. To any and all, she was known for that endearing offhand expression that her grandson, Todd, put to music for that evening of remembering and celebrating this remarkable woman, my Mother.

He picked up his guitar, strummed out the melody he’d composed earlier that day, and sang these lyrics:

Whenever I hear the word “whatever”
it makes me think of a blessed life
that we all thought just might last forever
though we all know we all must die

She’d just wave and say “whatever”
and let the strife pass her on by.
In the time it takes to say “whatever”
she’d forgive and forget and resume her smile.

Lake Mistake is a sacred place [Just ask me; I’ll tell you that story later.]
in our thoughts and in our minds;
so let us embrace our immortal disposition
and try to keep that spirit alive.

Well I’ll just wave and say “whatever;”
I feel inspired by her refrain.
Look at all the beauty around us
and count life’s blessings day to day.

It’s up to us now to go further in our experience
and to expand on our horizons,
not just for ourselves and our dear family,
but all who surround us in our lives.

It’s time to wave and say “whatever,”
in our own ways say our goodbyes;
and on the other side of that “whatever”
I’m pretty sure you’ll find her smile.

May each of us continue our life journey assured that nature and nurture affirm a fluidity of travel, resilience for the rapids, grace for grounding, and gratitude for every moment as we move toward the other side of the mystery of “whatever” and behold now and then the assurance of a loving smile.

I love you each and all. Amen.

Sources:

Todd White, “Whatever,” for “Gram” – November, 2009.

“All Things New”
A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
May 2, 2010

“What’s new?” we ask, not necessarily expecting an update on what’s happening in the Gulf Coast or Afghanistan or Arizona and not necessarily expecting a full update on what’s happening with the person we asked. Yet, that simple inquiry carries hope for a response that will satisfy even a glimmer of our fascination with what is new. I believe it’s our human tendency to move out of whatever we feel is the ordinary into what’s new, what is literally extra-ordinary.

It’s not surprising that our Easter hymns commonly include the hymn we sang earlier, “O Life That Maketh All Things New.” Not only does this hymn invigorate us as we begin a new day, it feels like a resurrection of spirit on a brand new day. AND, not incidental for Unitarian Universalists on Easter, it lets us bypass the challenging notion of physical resurrection.

As we moved into the third verse, we sang about “the joy of paths untrod, one in the soul’s perennial youth…” Again, the resonance of all things new. We celebrate a path not yet taken. We celebrate the idea of being “forever young,” however fleeting youth really is.

More than any other season, spring awakens all our senses to what is renewed. Nature itself breathes resurrection. Can we ever take it for granted in the aftermath of bone-chilling winters? No wonder we talk about the seasons of life, from infancy to childhood to young adulthood to middle age to old age on into death. With every death, something in each of us dies; with every birth, something in each of us is born all over again. So it is with this season. Writer Hal Borland understood the

“….temptation to say, as May spreads the leaves and opens the blossoms, that spring has come again just as it has come for untold aeons. But the fact is that no two springs are exactly alike.

….Another May, another spring, eternal but unlike any other that was or shall be.”

The ingredients of the cycle of the seasons are ever shifting, ever changing, no two seasons and no two moments ever alike. If we try to grasp a moment, if we try to hold onto it, it’s passed and we’re forced to let go.

How clearly I recall such a moment. On a seemingly ordinary day, I stood as a young child with my nose pressed up against the screen of our front door, gazing out at the gentle thoroughfare of North Adams Street….and wondering. The place was the front hall of our frame house across the street from the public school I attended in a small Iowa town. The year was 1948. There was a smoky, gently pungent scent in the air. Time stood still…..It is 1948. 1948 has never been. It will never be again. I am in it. Today has never been. It will never be again. I am in it. This very moment has never been. It will never be again. I know it. I feel it. I breathe it.

My epiphany of the “nowness” of time has lingered. It has also ripened into a consciousness of the fragility of time. It’s here and gone, briefer than a breath. All is change. Yes, there are recognizable threads of place, persons, feelings—even sights and sounds and smells and tastes. But no moment, no season, no May, no “now” is ever the same as any other. The “new” doesn’t last. In the blink of an eye, we are here and not here. In the blink of an eye, the universe shifts.

Awareness permits us to stretch the moment. Consider your most vivid memories. What allows them to be so? Immersion, full immersion into the moment you were experiencing. All your senses are heightened. Such a moment becomes a lifetime within a lifetime.

Consider the moments you’ve experienced in this religious community of First Parish. What lingers for you? Perhaps it’s not a pleasant memory. Perhaps it’s a euphoric memory. Undoubtedly it’s a transforming memory. You changed because of this moment that you’re remembering. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Breathe it in. Breathe in this memory, this moment. (Silence)

Now let it go. Exhale. That moment is gone. But you’re right next door in time to the moment in which you called it back as best you could. Like Borland’s experience of “another May, another spring, eternal but unlike any other that was or shall be.”

This moment that is now is new. (Pause) That moment that was now is past. It is an “old moment.” Which feels better to you, a new moment or an old moment? Would you prefer “all things new” or “all things old?”

What is it about our preference for the “new” when in a nanosecond, it’s not? Why is it that the Preacher of the First Testament Book of Ecclesiastes sounds like such a sourpuss in the very first chapter?

“What has been is what will be,
And what has been done is what will be done;
And there is nothing new under the sun.”

on into his claim that

“I have seen everything that is done under the sun;
And behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.”

Is this really a guy you’d want to have to dinner? If your instant response is, “No!” my guess is it’s because he sounds like he’s been there, done that about everything that has crossed his path. God forbid, you ask him, “What’s new?”

Yet Hal Borland and even the little girl who is still part of me are suggesting that nothing is new and everything is new, that nothing is old and everything is old—everything, that is, except the moment we inhabit. I would guess that even the cynical sounding Preacher would accede to that. The moment we inhabit is new, BUT it’s fleeting.

So what do we make of it, this notion of the moment that is here and gone before we can take a full breath? What do we make of it?

“Bardo,” writes Sogyal Rinpoche in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,

“is a Tibetan word that simply means a ‘transition’ or a gap between the completion of one situation and the onset of another. Bar means ‘in between’, and do means ‘suspended’ or ‘thrown.’”

There is, what Rinpoche describes, “the ‘natural’ bardo of this life,” spanning the time between our birth and our death. It is the best time to prepare for the other bardos—the bardo of dying; the bardo of dharmata, meaning “the essence of things as they are;” and the bardo of becoming.

Ask an elder among us about the transitory nature of this life. Chances are she or he will give you a knowing look and speak of how fleeting it is, how quickly it goes, as my own mother did at the age of 95, just five years before her death. We arrive as newborns. We depart, if we’re fortunate, after a long life, looking and feeling quite different than we did as that newborn, yet holding the history that includes our birth. From the moment of birth, we were growing old, yet greeting new forms of identify. Flux, transition, change all describe the fluid manner of our living. My life and each moment of my life is a bardo. So it is for each of us. So it is for the earth of which we are a part. That interconnected web is a web of flux.

Transition gives rise to uncertainty and ambiguity. If every moment is a bardo, then uncertainty is ever with us. This might sound scary, but Rinpoche explains that the very nature of this uncertainty “creates gaps, spaces in which profound chances and opportunities for transformation are continuously flowering if, that is, they can be seen and seized.”

Not knowing, living with ambiguity lends a certain humility that is core to whatever wisdom we might claim. How is it that in the cycle of the seasons, March (at least for me) gives rise to the anxious uncertainty that spring might not come; it’s simply a season I remembered from times past. What choice do I have but to go with the flow of earth-time, of earth’s bardos, and with the onset of spring declare a knowing, “Oh, of course!” A more apt response might be gratitude and wonder. Gratitude and wonder accompany awareness that every single moment of our living, every single moment of life itself, is a bardo, a transition.

It is no less so with where you as a congregation are and where I as your minister for another two months am. We’re in transition. For some this raises anxiety. But we have a choice. You do; I do. We can flail in anxious uncertainty, like a drowning person; or we can move with grace and gratitude for what has been and what is across the suspension bridge we’re on.

I shouldn’t be surprised that so many of you have come up to me and asked with a somewhat nervous tone, “How are you doing, Jan?” I believe you really want to know, and I believe you also want to be at ease with yourself. There are perhaps some things to be at ease about and others that call for reflection. Overall, I’m embracing the transition; and integral to that transition is right now, this morning, the beauty of the earth, the connections that we hold, the community that we celebrate and that is ever unfolding. The only difference between the transition to which we’re all attuned and the transition that is every single moment is our level of awareness, our readiness to awaken—in the poetic clarity of Hal Borland and the wonder of a little girl pressing her nose up against a screen door.

Are all things new? Yes, and in a heartbeat all things are as old as the first breath of life.

Might we embrace the now? Might we embrace the now in which we abide as a community of faith and practice, because this faith really does take a lot of practice? Might we embrace the now that we are each navigating? Might we embrace the now of this moment, looking into each other’s eyes, hearing each other’s voices, attuned if we will be so to each other’s rhythms of heart and mind. In the moment that is, let us be here and together and thankful. And may our memories then hold this moment, hold it dear.

Amen.

Sources:

Hal Borland, “Spring: A Reiteration,” The Progressive 36, April 1972: 22; Torrey, ed., Writings of Thoreau: Journal, 12:400.

Ecclesiastes or The Preacher in the Bible (Revised Standard Version)

Samuel Longfellow (words), “O life That Maketh All Things New,” in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 12.

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Edited by Patrick Gaffney and Andrew Harvey, HarperSanFrancisco, 1994.