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