First Parish Cohasset

Participants will gather downtown by the Town Pump (in front of the old hardware store) at 4:45. We’ll have hot cocoa, coffee and cookies. Everyone is welcome. This is a community event for young and old, especially those with school-age children, in conjunction with the Cohasset Merchants’ Holiday Stroll. Bring some friends! Exceptional singing voices are NOT required; carols will be familiar and simple–and we’ll have song booksfor everyone.

We’re also asking everyone to bring a pair of socks (or two) which will be donated to Boston Health Care for the Homeless.  Socks should be white cotton; both men’s and women’s sizes are welcome.

Before the Beginning

Unknown to us, there are moments
When crevices we cannot see open
For time to come alive with beginning.

As in Autumn a field of corn knows
When enough green has been inhaled
From the clay and under the skill
Of an artist breeze becomes gold in a day,

When the ocean still as a mirror
Of a sudden takes a sinister curve
To rise in a mountain of wave
That would swallow a village.

How to a flock of starlings
Scattered, at work on grass,
From somewhere, a signal comes
And suddenly as one, they describe
A geometric shape in the air.

When the audience becomes still
And the soprano lets the silence deepen,
In that slowed holding, the whole area
Hovers nearer, then alights
On the wings of breath
Poised to soar into song.

These inklings were first prescribed
(This) morning (when) we met (together)
Wondering if (among) us something
Was deciding to begin or not.

John O’Donahue, “Conamara Blues” Cliff Street Books,

Harper Collins, 2001

A Time to Turn

It is a holy time, this turning of the year.

A faint chill starts to hover in the air.

You think about unpacking your wool sweaters,

then do it.  A few leaves change from green to yellow,

and drop gently to the earth.

We have completed the Days of Awe.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

And Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

A holy presence hovers in the air,

And you are asked

to unpack your very heart,

to turn with the turning of the year.

To drop humbly and gently to the earth

and praise the Source of Life,

the earth that gives you breath.

The Rev. Nurya Love Parish (adapted)

Thought for Contemplation: “When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people.”                            -Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Deciding to Begin”

The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson

First Parish in Cohasset

September 19, 2010

Readings: Before the Beginning by John O’Donohue

A Time to Turn by Nurya Love Parish

Unknown to us there are moments

When crevices we cannot see open

For time to come alive with beginning^[1]

A holy presence hovers in the air,

And you are asked

To unpack your very heart

To turn with the turning of the year.^[2]

We are at a turning, at a time when crevices we cannot see open, when a holy presence hovers in the air.  Every year it comes, and while every year we mark the importance of this time, we do not always take the risk of stepping fully into it.  We do not always even see them, the crevices, do not recognize the invitation.  Ignoring the moment and the opportunity, we  move on automatic pilot, going through the check list of our tasks, as though this were something to get through, rather than something in which to “be.”

Yet, we feel the stirrings.  We can smell the changes of the air.  “Oh,” we might say, “today it smells like fall.”

But what that means to us, what memories it conjures up, what hopes it stirs within our hearts remains for the most part, unspoken.

For me the fall first stirs anticipation.  I remember notebooks and boxes of new crayons, new school clothes, and with a little trepidation, a new class and a new teacher.  And I remember feeling big.  Bigger than I was last year.  Big enough to take on something new, as big as I had aspired to be the year before.  Exhilarating- until I realized when I got there, that everyone else had gotten a year older and a year bigger too, and we were still in the same relative places.

But my classroom was not the same, my teacher was not the same, and the material I was expected to master was new to me as well.  Excitement and anxiety went hand in hand.

The teacher would stand up front and begin.  She (until Jr. High School, the teachers were all women) would begin to talk to us, to me, explaining how things would be, what we would do and how we would do them.  And as I listened I relaxed into her implied confidence that we would in fact we able to do all of those things.

What memories might the fall and the new year beginning bring up for you?  Electric with excitement?  Fraught with anxiety?  Are they memories of hearth and warmth, or exposure and fear?  Recall of challenges?  Opportunities?  A little of all of these?   Quite likely.  And yet despite the pluses and the minuses, the fears and hopeful anticipations, here we are, all here together, having survived and grown and learned a few things in the process.  Here we are, facing once again the crevices that open for time to come alive with beginning.

How do we do that… recognize the crevices?  Find the courage to come alive with beginning?

Nurya Love Parish calls it the holy presence that hovers in the air.  I feel it.  The herald of the eternal beginning, the call to awaken to life and step into the fray sings out from the changes in the air and the coolness of the breeze, from the changing of the light and the turning of the leaves, the scurrying of the squirrels, and the parade of children with their exuberant voices and colorful backpacks.  You are here!  You are alive!  You are part of it all- Enter, Rejoice and Come In!!

Ah, but it is not so simple.  Joys always come with sorrows.  Rejoicing with relinquishment.  To start fresh we need to make peace with the past, release the bondage of regret and resentment, of anger and of guilt.

A holy presence hovers in the air

And you are asked to unpack your very heart,

To turn with the turning of the year.

The story is told of two Buddhist monks who encounter a beautiful woman trying to cross a stream, but the water was too high for her to cross. Among the rules the monks live by is one that forbids touching a woman. One monk takes pity on the woman in distress, lifts her up, carries her across the stream, then puts her down and goes on his way.

The other monk is greatly disturbed by this and stews over it for hours. Finally he can keep silent no longer and berates his companion monk.

“How dare you touch a woman- no less carry her all the way across the stream! You have violated the rules of our order, and could have brought public criticism and humiliation on us had anyone seen you.”

The first monk replies, “I put the woman down way back there at the side of the stream. You, on the other hand, have been carrying her all day.”^[3]

It is not by accident that the Jewish New Year culminates its beginning celebration with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement which concluded last night.  To begin afresh, to walk through those openings the new year exposes, we need to go unencumbered by unresolved baggage.  When we reconcile ourselves to what is and has been, when we make amends for wrongs we’ve done, and extend forgiveness to those who have wronged us, we are not so apt to get caught by the past as we start walking into the unfolding days before us.  We can put down the forbidden at the bank of the stream, rather than carrying it all day or all year long.

The Jewish community does this once a year.  Jesus suggested that we take ourselves through that process every day when he offered an example of a meaningful prayer.    “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” You may remember it.  You may know it as the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father or the prayer of Jesus.  It matters not how you learned it.  But if you can hold on to those lines:

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” and pray them daily, you will have begun to unpack your very heart.

I want to tell you a story.

It is about a man named Bill. He has wild hair, wears a T-shirt with holes in it, jeans with tears, and no shoes.

This was literally his wardrobe for his entire four years of college.

He is brilliant. Kind of profound and very, very bright. While in college, he embraced his faith in a new and personally meaningful way.
Across the street from the campus is a well-appointed, very conservative church. The people there are well-dressed, respectable people.  They want to develop a ministry to the students but are not sure how to go about it.
One day Bill decides to go there. He walks in with no shoes, torn jeans, his T-shirt, and that wild hair. The service has already started and so Bill starts down the aisle looking for a seat.

The church is completely packed and he can’t find a seat. By now, people are really looking a bit uncomfortable, but no one says anything.

Bill gets closer and closer and closer to the pulpit, and when he realizes there are no accessible seats, he just sits down right on the carpet.

By now the people are really uptight, and the tension in the air is thick.

About this time, the minister realizes that from way at the back of the church, a deacon is slowly making
his way toward Bill.

Now the deacon is in his eighties, has silver-gray hair, and a three-piece suit. A devoted church- man, very
elegant, very dignified, very courtly. He walks with a cane and, as he starts walking toward this boy, everyone is saying to themselves that you can’t blame him for what he’s going to do.

How can you expect a man of his age and of his background to understand some college kid on the floor?

It takes a long time for the man to reach the boy. The church is utterly silent except for the clicking
of the man’s cane. All eyes are focused on him. You can’t even hear anyone breathing. The minister can’t
even preach the sermon until the deacon does what he has to do.

And now they see this elderly man drop his cane on the floor. With great difficulty, he lowers himself
and sits down next to Bill and worships with him so he won’t be alone.^[4]

Unknown to us, there are moments

When crevices we cannot see open

for time to come alive with beginning….

These inklings were first prescribed

(This) morning (when) we met (together)

Wondering if (among) us something

Was deciding to begin or not.^[5]

Amen.  Blessed Be.

---

^[1] John O’ Donohue, Before the Beginning, in Conamara Blues, Cliff Street Books

^[2] Nurya Love Parish, A Time to Turn

^[3] folktale, retold from a story recounted by Anthony De Mello in the Song of the Bird, 1982

^[4] Retold by me from a source unknown to me

^[5] John O’Donohue Ibid

Thought for Contemplation: “The church at its best is the people at its best.” -Clarence Russell Skinner, Universalist minister, widely regarded as the most influential Universalist minister in the first half of the twentieth century

“Come as You Are”

The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson

First Parish in Cohasset

Ingathering Sunday

September 12, 2010

I make a lot of mistakes.

You need to know that.

One of the first things I had our administrator, Sandy; order for me was White-Out.

I am a believer in mistake making.  There is nothing wrong with making mistakes- as along as we can recognize them (or are helped to recognize them).     Learning something in the process, we then can be moved to take some corrective action.

Sometimes that corrective action is as easy as picking up and applying White-Out to the paper.  Sometimes it isn’t.

So, since today is for many of us, our first time meeting, and for all of us our first time in worship together, it seemed important to use this time to introduce myself, and get the hard things right out there.  I make mistakes.

In fact mine is a family of mistake makers.

When I was 8 years old we were getting me ready for my first trip to sleep away summer camp.  I needed a footlocker.  My father drove our car downtown (we lived in Manhattan, and it was rare to ever drive downtown) so that we would be able to purchase a footlocker and transport it home.  We made the trip, and the purchase, put the precious footlocker in the trunk of the car and my father proceeded to drive us home.  I was excited- but not so excited that I didn’t notice when he turned onto 6^th Avenue, that all of the cars were coming toward us.  Yikes!  Even a non-driving 8 year old knew that this was not only not right, it was downright scary.

Slowly my father backed the car up into the street from which we’d turned. Somehow, between the last time my father had driven downtown and that day, the avenues had been turned into one way streets, alternating those going uptown with those going downtown.   He’d forgotten, and driving on automatic pilot, he had not paid a lot of attention to the signs.  He learned something that day, and I did too – a powerful enough lesson that I still remember it.
“Don’t assume you already know what is going on- read the signs!”

I remember the week we finally got a dishwasher- my mother’s dream come true.  We walked into the kitchen to find soap suds streaming out of the new dishwasher, covering the floor. My youngest sister was going somewhere special and had not put her favorite pants in when my mother was collecting the laundry.

She had decided to wash them in the dishwasher.

When I was a teenager we were getting ready to go on family vacation.  I was packing my things.  I had a container of roll-on deodorant- a new product at the time, for which the ball wouldn’t roll and the deodorant wouldn’t come out.  So I wrestled with the housing that held the ball on to the jar until it finally popped off.  And I mean POPPED off!  With a loud pop the housing let go, creating a suction that pulled the liquid deodorant up out of the container, right into my eye.  My eye!  Deodorant doesn’t belong in the eye.  It stung like crazy.  I couldn’t open my eye.   My parents took me to the emergency room.  While I sat there hurting, both with physical pain and embarrassment, the nurses and doctors in the ER hallway kept whispering, looking at me, pointing, and laughing.  Deodorant in your eye?  Were you afraid your eye was going to smell?  They had a good laugh at my expense, gave me some ointment and sent me on my way to an otherwise happily uneventful vacation.  But I will never try to pull the top off of a roller ball container again.

Funny stories. We tell them over and over in my family and laugh but I am not so sure we were laughing when they were happening.  They are all stories through which we learned something.  Because of that we appreciate them.  The lessons are valuable.

Sometimes when things go wrong, it is not our family that can best hold us.  Sometimes our families are so caught up in the mistake, or its consequent embarrassment, that it requires someone else to reach around and hold us, someone else who can remind the whole embarrassed family that love does not require perfection.

There was a woman who wished to encourage her young son’s progress on the piano.  She grabbed the opportunity to take her boy to a concert by the great pianist and composer Paderewski (1860-1941).

They came into the spectacular concert hall and found their seats.  There was still some time before the concert began and the mother saw a friend of hers in the audience.  She walked across and down the aisle to greet her.

Seizing the opportunity to explore the wonders of the concert hall, the little boy rose and eventually explored his way through a door marked “NO ADMITTANCE.”

When the house lights dimmed and the concert was about to begin, the mother returned to her seat and discovered that the child was missing.

At that moment, the curtains parted and spotlights focused on the impressive Steinway grand piano on stage.

In horror, the mother saw her little boy sitting at the keyboard, innocently picking out “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

The grand master made his entrance on stage, grasped the situation, quickly moved to the piano and whispered in the boy’s ear, “Don’t quit.  Keep playing.”

Then, leaning over, Paderewski reached down with his left hand and began filling in a bass part.

Soon his right arm reached around to the other side of the child and he added a running obbligato.

Together the old master and the young novice transformed a frightening situation into a wonderfully creative experience.

The audience was mesmerized.^[1]

We try to do something good in life, but it turns into a mess. Our marriage unravels, we insult a friend, we can’t stand our job, put our foot in our mouth, or our neglected health goes sour.

The mother in this story meant to do something good by greeting a friend she had not seen for a long time.  The little boy meant to do something good by practicing piano. The audience had come for a concert.

And the concert master, Paderewski, without blaming or freezing, or blinking an eye, grasped the situation of a few small mistakes leading to a potentially public embarrassment or catastrophe.  The audience was owed a concert.  The little boy was not to be humiliated.  The parent was to be reassured that her son was okay and safe.  And Paderewski found a way to include and honor all- by accepting everyone just as they came, and working with that.  No regrets, no recriminations, no talking about what could have been or should have been.   Just a simple acceptance of things as they are, embracing the truth, then moving on.

Sometimes we just stand there in tears because we can’t think of anything else to do. That’s when it helps to remember that we are accepted and acceptable no matter what happens.  We belong to God, to the universe by virtue of our birth.    Everyone who was ever born, belongs here. We are held, beloved, even forgiven for being the flawed creatures that we are. Erring is human.

“Error,” said Ben Franklin “Is a window into normal human nature.”

It is in our mistakes that we learn, that we become better people, that we grow closer to becoming the person we meant to be.

And isn’t that the work of the church – to help us grow in wisdom, in spirit, in the flowering of our humanity? And to do that, we need to come as we are.

A community and a faith that want to embrace and hold real people in its love, will hold us as we are, mistakes and all, and cherish us.  It is a safe place for loving and a safe place for growing.

So my friends, my new friends and companions, please, come as you are.  Let us forge a covenant into which we bring our full selves, undisguised and unadorned.  With the assurance of that acceptance we can rekindle the promise, the hope and the joy that we have long contained

May we learn and heal and grow as we walk this time together.  For truly, we all need a place in which to come, just as we are.

---

^[1] Retold from a story on the internet- original  source unknown to me