First Parish Cohasset

Thought for Contemplation: “History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. “
*Maya Angelou
“Knowing Our Truths To Practice Our Values”
The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson
First Parish in Cohasset

Readings from Why History Matters, by Richard Stengel
My German Grandmother made wonderful traditional German food. When I spent weekends at her house I looked forward to the chicken soup with a hint of the nutmeg she had freshly ground on her little spice grater, and to the cucumber salad with cucumbers sliced so thin they reminded me of the onion skin paper my mother used in her typewriter. I wondered how she did that-made the cucumber slices so thin. We would have sweet and sour red cabbage with bits of bacon in it, mushrooms in gravy, hot potato salad and a barbecued chicken she would get at the butcher shop, and then cut up and heat in a pot of gravy on the stove. I loved going with her to the butcher shop. It seemed exotic and old fashioned. There was saw dust on the floor that I could arrange into pictures with the toe of my shoe. The butcher also had some German products including candies – he often gave me one. So I assumed that barbecued chicken, cooked at the butcher’s on a rotisserie and reheated in gravy was a traditional German dish, along with the hot potato salad, red cabbage, chicken soup and paper thin cucumber salad.
It was not until I was an adult that I discovered that my grandmother’s oven didn’t work. She didn’t trust the landlord not to raise her rent if he fixed it, so she lived all those years preparing and eating only what she could cook on top of the stove.
Now if I want to make a traditional German dinner, I am released from having to buy a barbecue-rotisserie chicken and heating it in gravy. Which is great, because I really don’t like gravy! But had I never learned the circumstance within which all of my grandmother’s cooking took place, I too would have been bound by a perceived tradition, even though my oven works just fine.
A professor of mine in seminary told the story of a young man who had graduated and went on to serve a church not too far away in Connecticut. His was a successful ministry, but there was one point of contention that had continued between him and the congregation. When they had communion, instead of standing behind the table, as a host at a meal would when breaking the bread and pouring the wine, he would always stand in front of the table.
They complained because it was not what they were used to, and they complained because his back and his torso were blocking them from seeing what he was doing, which was an important part of the communion experience for them.
He was firm. He would continue to do it the way he had been taught in seminary. He explained to them that he was standing with his back to them because he was being respectful of God. That he was, with them facing the altar, placing himself fully within the congregation as one of them, true to the free church tradition which affirms the priesthood of all believers.
They listened, but they were not convinced. They chaffed. They complained. Eventually he called his professor of worship and liturgical arts.
“Tell me again,” he said, “why it is that we face the altar and turn our backs to the congregation when we are preparing communion. ”
“Oh, ” laughed the professor. “We do that here because one of the communion table legs broke several years ago and the table was very was unstable. We loved the table. No one wanted to remove it, and it didn’t look like it was the kind of break that could easily be repaired. So someone nailed the table to the floor to keep it stable. With it nailed to the floor, we couldn’t pull it out to stand behind it any more. So we had to stand in front of it.”
Many years ago in most congregations, and quite possibly this one, everyone went to Sunday School, and everyone went to worship. Often classes were held first and from that time of study, adults and children went to worship. There are some churches that still follow that pattern.
The pattern that most Unitarian Universalist congregations have developed is of a Sunday morning gathering in which children’s Sunday School is held at the same time as adult worship. Our wonderful church archivists have surfaced an annual report of the Church School to the congregation from 1956. By then church school and adult worship were distinctly separate and held at the same time.
The Religious Education program was designed to fit the same one hour time slot that the adults had also adopted. It was a plan of convenience that worked pretty well.
Then our congregations began to miss the children. And they became concerned that the children really did not know or feel comfortable in the worship space. So the idea came up of having the children in for part of the service. Some congregations do it every Sunday, some, like ours , every other Sunday. And most congregations have some form of worship for the children on the Sundays they are not with the adults, in addition to their classes.
But the people who write our curricula write for at least an hour of Sunday School class. And they feel squeezed, that there is not enough time to cover material in a meaningful way. What once was a system that served our purposes and was of mutual convenience is now a little out of synch. We chaff because we cannot fit everything we want to do in an hour of worship, and the teachers chaff because they cannot cover the material they want to share with the children. The practice we continue is not meeting our needs.
Remembering why we do the things we do, and the purposes they were intended to serve, allows us the capacity to decide when those habits and customs still serve us, and when they are missing the mark and need to be changed.
I once served as interim minister in a congregation that was much like this- a white, Anglo, liberal congregation. But it was located in a city that had experienced significant immigration and the church was now surrounded by a community that spoke a different language, had a different culture, and had different religious practices. The congregation was despairing. Were they destined to shrink until the funds were gone and the doors had to close?
When we engaged in an exploration of their history, I discovered, and they remembered, that about two generations before, their city had also known a great influx of immigrants. The immigrants were of a different religion, a different culture and spoke a different language. The newcomers struggled to find their way in this country, poor, isolated, often afraid and confused. This congregation I was serving, had, those many years ago established a mission church in the neighborhood of the immigrants. The church had initially provided the salary for a pastor who spoke the language of the immigrants. It supported him, and the fledging new congregation financially and with periodic joint activities, continuing education, ESL classes and other services. Over the generations the mission church thrived, then dwindled as the second generation Americans no longer needed it. They spoke English and the American culture was their culture.
Eventually the mission church was absorbed into the parent church. By the time I arrived this was history. Many of the leaders of the congregation could trace their roots back to that ethnic mission church.
So when the congregation said to me that they felt helpless in the face of the insurmountable obstacles of language, culture, custom and religion, and that maybe they were just going to die, I could not let that go unchallenged.
“Look,” I said. “You have faced this problem before. You rose to the challenge and addressed it. People who were strange and foreign two generations ago are now active members and leaders of your beloved community. You do know how to go out into this ethnic community learning their ways, their needs and their strengths. Become the kind of church you would like to encounter when your feet touch down on foreign soil. And they did.
Uncovering the story of why we do things the way we do can sometimes lead us to self-conscious discomfort, recognizing that we are being held hostage to a practice that no longer has a reason for being. Uncovering the story of what we have done and how we have managed our challenges can provide resources and encouragement as we ready ourselves to face the challenges of today.
Historian David McCullough says that being an American is not based on a common ancestry, a common religion, even a common culture- it’s based on accepting an uncommon set of ideas. And if we don’t understand those ideas, we don’t value them; and if we don’t value them, we don’t protect them. He reminds us of the words of Thomas Jefferson “A nation can never be ignorant and free.” So too, I say, of the church.
So what are the values that are the essence of Unitarian Universalism, the values our practices need to protect and serve?
Earle Morse Wilbur traces the development of Unitarianism through history. He distills the essence of Unitarianism as a commitment to freedom, reason and tolerance. These three cherished values and their practice through hundreds of years, have shaped us and the people of faith we have become.
If these values of freedom, reason and tolerance are important to you, as they are to me, they become a source of strength and support as we recognize that in our times of strength, these elements have been in play. When we have lost sight of them, we have often been faced with troubling consequences.
For example, during World War I the American Unitarian Association removed from Fellowship any minister who did not support the war effort. John Haynes Holmes, founder of the ACLU and co-founder of the NAACP was minister of the renowned Community Church in New York and a pacifist. In support of their minister, the Community Church withdrew from the American Unitarian Association. It was not until years later that the AUA expressed its regret and the Community Church rejoined our association. We get in trouble when we stray from our core values.
Another essential value in our tradition is that of inclusion, the essence of Universalism, which has thrust us out on the cutting edge of civil rights issues, from our work to abolish slavery, to our fighting for the rights of women, LGBT folks and immigrants.
It was the murder of James Reeb, Unitarian Universalist minister during the civil rights march in Selma, Alabama that outraged the nation and motivated President Lyndon Johnson to use all of his powers of influence to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. Our values had driven hundreds of Unitarian Universalists to march, and ultimately, those values changed our nation.
Ours is a human institution, checkered indeed, with points of shining vision and courage, and times of fear narrow interests. We can claim it all, the pride and regret. Understanding then, who we truly are and from where we have come, we can imagine a future, choose a direction, and taking with us the resources we have uncovered, redeem the errors and create tomorrows- the tomorrows we want with wiser, kinder and braver ways, tomorrows in which all of us would want to live and thrive.

Thought for Contemplation: Over a five-year period, the death rate from heart disease was twice a high among those who didn’t go to church very often as it was for those who frequently attended.” David Shields

“Growing Toward Wisdom
The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson
First Parish in Cohasset
October 9 2011

“One starts to get young at the age of sixty, and then it’s too late.”
Pablo Picasso

“I never wake up without finding life more insignificant than it was before. “
Jonathan Swift

“Here I thought that I was learning how to live, while I have in reality been learning how to die.”
Leonardo da Vinci, who died at 67

“I’ve never really learned how to live, and I’ve discovered too late that life is for living.”
Lord Reith, 78, the first general director of the BBC.

Jackie Kennedy Onassis who died at 64 said:
“If I’d known I’d die so young, I wouldn’t have done so many sit ups.”

“The ancient Persians believed that the first 30 years should be spent living life and the last 40 years should be spent understanding it.”

Sometimes the understanding never comes, as with Macbeth:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

But the task of our lives is uncovering the significance, the meaning of our lives, or the understanding from which we draw our significance. That is why Macbeth’s speech is so poignant and so memorable. He asks the right question and comes up with the wrong answer. Maybe he just didn’t live long enough.

Arthur Schopenhauer saw the second portion of life as a time for commentary on the first portion and Rousseau suggested that by the time one reached 60, the only goal left, was wisdom.
You might be thinking by now that my topic is aging- what happens to us as we age. But what I want to talk about is wisdom. And in particular, I want to talk about points of view.
Writers always need to think about points of view. Who is speaking? From what perspective? Does it change during the course of the narrative? Is the point of view credible?
These are questions for writers because they need to authentically reflect life, and there is really no story that can be told without a point of view.
The story I tell as a young girl about my life is quite different from the story I tell as an established adult in the final third of my life. They would all be true from their points of view, and they would be different, even when talking about the same people and the same events. From the perspective of my age I can understand much larger contexts in which my life happened, broader historical contexts and constraints which now evoke understanding and compassion for me and for those who lived those days with me, even admiration for many who lived through those days.
Awareness of point of view is as important to readers, or listeners, as it is for writers or speakers. If Macbeth had spoken his tomorrow speech at his acceptance of the Nobel Prize it would mean something different to us, than spoken by a man whose career is in shambles and whose wife is laying on her death bed.
The root of wisdom is that we can look back at the past and begin to see the complexity of it all, as we consider not only the points of view of others, but the changes in the point of view in ourselves.
The child in a family with alcoholism may be angry at the mother for her controlling behavior and angry at the father for an unending series of disappointments. The adult child of that family, may come to understand that the parents were gripped in a cycle of the disease whereby the mother, trying to manage an out of control situation, over controlled what she could to compensate for what was out of control. She was doing the best she could with what she knew. The now adult child could come to understand that the father had a disease which was out of control. It was not lack of love that caused him to renege on his promises, but his disease. This understanding does not change the real hurt and anger, the loss and abandonment often felt by the child but it creates a meaning and a context in which forgiveness and reconciliation are possible.
Just as it is important to consider and reconsider points of view when looking at our own personal and family history, so it is important to consider points of view when looking at any history, especially if we are seeking wisdom and understanding…which I believe we who gather here are.
We are entering into a time of historical reflection. This is Columbus Day weekend. From here we are moving to our congregational exploration of our own history, and from there we will fall into Thanksgiving. All of these are stories with more than one story line, more than one point of view. If we seek true wisdom and understanding we will spread out as wide a net as we can, to capture as
many stories and points of view as are possible.
This week we honor and celebrate the conferring of the Nobel Prize for Physics on three scientists who discovered that the universe is indeed expanding, expanding at a rate and in a pattern that is puzzling, but clearly happening and at an accelerated rate.
They didn’t get to own the expanding frontiers of the universe, the dimensions they discovered. And I am sure from their point of view that would have been bizarre. The frontiers of the universe belong to all.
When Jonas Salk made his discoveries and developed the polio vaccine in the early 1950’s, he was asked to whom it belonged. “To the people” he responded. It belonged to all of the people who might contract polio without it. He was clear. He did not patent it and sell it only to those who could pay high prices. He understood that it properly belonged to the people.
When Columbus discovered the Americas for Spain his point of view was quite different. Discovery meant the same thing as proprietorship. Discovery meant one could claim it as a private possession, in this case for a nation. That there were other people who had discovered this land before him did not seem to matter, nor that many of those people were living on the land and had been for generations. From Columbus’ point of view, and consequently eventually our point of view as immigrant Americans, the land was discovered by Columbus and through treaties and inheritance, rightfully belongs to us.
It is time to stop and think. Our point of view, with 20/20 hindsight can see that what happened was not right. Many of us can feel the angst of internal conflict. On the one hand wanting to celebrate the country we have become, and the brave souls who
brought us this far, including Columbus. On the other hand it is an experience in shame and helplessness to really look back at the early history of European settlement on these shores taking into consideration the point of view of the native people whose home it already was.
If wisdom and maturity consist of being able to hold multiple points of view as real and true and valid we as a nation are inching our way toward that wisdom. Two hundred and thirty five years after the birth of our nation and five hundred and nineteen years after Columbus encountered our shores we are learning that we can honor the raw courage of a Columbus who crossed the sea without knowing if there would be terra firma at the end of the voyage, and we can honor the sorrow and the enraged frustration by the people whose land we appropriated and whose ways we undermined and destroyed.
Wisdom, wisdom that most precious point of view, allows us to feel compassion for all the players, while being able to identify what went wrong, and learn from it.
Blessed are those who find wisdom,
those who gain understanding,
for she is more profitable than silver
and yields better returns than gold.
She is more precious than rubies;
nothing you desire can compare with her.
Long life is in her right hand;
in her left hand are riches and honor.
Her ways are pleasant ways,
and all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her;
those who hold her fast will be blessed.
…
do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight, preserve sound judgment and discretion;
they will be life for you, an ornament to grace your neck.
Then you will go on your way in safety,
and your foot will not stumble.
When you lie down, you will not be afraid;
when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.

May these be the days when we look upon our lives with compassion, growing in wisdom, having made our peace with truth, so that
When you lie down, you will not be afraid;
when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.

Thought for Contemplation: “Unitarian Universalism did more that speak about the freedom to be and to become. It gave me the resources I needed to exercise those freedoms.” -Anita Farber-Robertson
l
“Leaning in Toward One Another”
The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson
First Parish in Cohasset
October 2, 2011
Association Sunday

Reading: from A Holy Curiosity by Bruce Marshall
I didn’t know why I was going to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship that Sunday, other than that a couple who lived near me had started going and invited me- offered to give me a ride even, since my husband worked on Sundays and took the car. I had no idea really what Unitarian Universalism was, what it stood for, or what the folks who gathered did together. I only knew that I had heard good things about them and I didn’t have anything else to do that Sunday. So I went. And until I moved five years later, the only Sunday Service I missed was the one the morning after my son was born.

Clearly there was something there that was important, something I wanted, needed, even though I had not known it or understood it until I experienced it.

I loved that Fellowship and the people in it. We worked together to create an organic and whole grains food cooperative, we supported a local drug rehabilitation program, we engaged in learning things together, and we listened to each other speak from the heart, in worship and in gatherings. We shared music and poetry, laugher and tears. They loved my son, and I worried when we left, what it would mean to lose that community.

We moved to Hudson, Massachusetts and I presented myself to that congregation. I met with the board and told them that I had just completed my term as president of my congregation in New York, had, at different times chaired the worship committee, the pledge drive, and the Women’s Alliance. I was reporting for duty.

They were in search for a minister. They listened, looked at each other making body language signals only they understood and said to me,
“Anita, we are glad you are here and thank you for your offer. There are several things we expect will come together when we find and settle a new minister. Meanwhile, our Sunday School is in crises. We have too few children to run a successful program. We need someone to run the Sunday School, someone to get a program going. That’s what we need.”

They were honest, brutally honest. That was exactly what the situation was, and what they needed. And it was the only dimension of church life about which I didn’t have a clue. But I had told them I was available and would do what they needed. So I screwed my courage to the sticking place, trusting in the mystery of the universe, and said, “Sure. I’ll do that. I’ll run the Sunday School.”

Then I went home and almost threw up. I was in over my head.

I was young, inexperienced, and a little embarrassed by my bravado. What was I to do? I called the UUA and talked to Margaret Williams, then RE person at the UUA. She reassured me. She talked to me about curriculum. She offered to come to Hudson and meet with me and the RE Committee. I accepted all of her offers. She came. The RE Committee listened to her stark assessment of their dire situation, and reluctantly agreed that what they were doing wasn’t working. They authorized me to gather a task force to work over the summer to generate a curriculum concept and material that could work in our situation.

It was a wonderful summer of creativity and we opened our Sunday School doors in September with a new found energy and enthusiasm. What we were offering was creative, fun, and purposeful. And the children came, more and more of them each week, until the small band of 6 children had grown to 35. A miracle.

A miracle. A miracle that happened because the UUA was there as a resource for me. A miracle because the Religious Educators had put together core curriculum that could be adjusted and modified to meet many different congregational needs. Successful because the UUA encouraged us when we were despairing and celebrated our successes.

Just as the UUA had provided me with information about how to conduct an every-member canvass in my Fellowship, a congregation that had never had a pledge drive in its 25 years of existence, and had provided leadership training opportunities for me when I became president of the congregation and thereby chair of its board, the UUA supported me as a lay religious educator when I was desperate for support. I grew, the congregations grew, and the liberating message of Unitarian Universalism became more accessible to the community.

I call that a success story.
Thirty seven years later I stand here as your minister, skillful, equipped and committed because Unitarian Universalism did more that speak about the freedom to be and to become. It gave me the resources I needed to exercise those freedoms. It gave me the tools to become a leader and a teacher. It gave me the confidence to try and maybe fail. It gave me congregations that would empower, hold and support me in that growing, and it gave those congregations a structure of support and resources that would enable them to extend that trust, growing with me and more importantly, with each other.

This congregation more than many knows the stress and anxiety that comes with transitions in religious leadership. Last fall you began the year with a new minister, a new Director of Religious Education, and a new organist/pianist. Two years before you had negotiated a change in music directors. None of this was easy.
Kathleen Norris teaches children to write poetry. She comes to the classrooms as a visiting poet. Walking along the aisle of the third grade classroom, she glances at a desk and sees these words on the paper in the third grader’s awkward scrawl.

When my third snail died, I said,
“I’m through with snails.”

Some of you may be able to relate to that… To the sorrow, the grief, the loss, the fatigue of it all. It is tempting to say “I’m through with snails,” or church, or love.
Kathleen Norris sits at her desk as the children work. As the time for class to end approaches, the little girl calls to her, waving her paper with the finished poem. She wants Mrs. Norris to read it. She does.

When my third snail died, I said,
I’m through with snails.
But I didn’t mean it.

For a moment, a day, or a week the temptation is there to be through with snails. For a congregation, for you it may have been even longer. But you like the little third grader did not succumb.

Through it all you had the support, sometimes obvious and sometimes not, of an association of congregations. You had the resources of the denomination to help you find the right people to fill those roles. You had a faith that mattered, this faith, our Unitarian Universalist faith, that needed to be nurtured and embodied. And lo! The system is working. Here we are living, loving, celebrating, learning, caring and growing together.

When we had our house meetings we asked to you tell each other what it is that keeps you coming back. The answers were legion. Some came up again and again. Music, Spiritual oasis, Religious Education, Community, Hope for the Future, Purposeful contribution, Unitarian Universalist values. What we do together here matters. It matters to you. It matters to the community. And we do not invent it or do it alone. We have bound ourselves together in an association, reflecting our principles of autonomy and relationship.

Two donkeys, heavily burdened with packs, ascend a narrow path that winds up the side of a mountain, a sheer wall of rock on one side and a precipitous drop into the canyon on the other. Yet they do not follow one another in single file, but walk side by side in pairs, despite the narrowness and the cliff. They ascend side-by-side, leaning inward against one another, sharing the weight they bear, balanced across the geometry of their triangularity, stronger together and more secure than either could be alone.

So it is with us. It is how we do congregational life together, leaning in toward one another, feeling the strength that comes with that bond.

And it is how we insure the health and vitality of our congregation- joining with other congregations, feeling the wonder of strength and joy that comes when we walk and lean together.

Thought for Contemplation: `”When we are dead and people weep for us and grieve, let it be because we touched their lives with beauty and simplicity. Let it not be said that life was good to us, but rather, that we were good to life.” Jacob P. Rudin, Gates of Repentance

“True Self, Without Regret”
The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson
First Parish in Cohasset
September 25, 2011
Readings: Now I Become Myself, by May Sarton
From Reflections on the lectionary, by Clay Oglesbee, in the Christian Century, 9/20/11

When Sam Keen was a small boy, during one of those endless summers of childhood, he and his father were sitting in the shade, under a peach tree. While they sat, his father picked up a peach seed and began whittling.
With increasing excitement the boy watched the magic of his father’s skilled hands as out of the seed emerged a tiny creature – a monkey. Oh, how he did wish to have that amazing treasure. He marshaled up his nerve and asked his father if he could have the monkey when it was finished.
“This one is for your mother, but I will carve you one some day.” His father answered.
Well the days passed, and months and years, and Sam grew up, never thinking any more about the peach seed monkey. Life was full and it absorbed him.
The day came when his father’s life was drawing to a close, and Sam had come home to visit him. They sat under the shade of a Juniper tree and talked. Sam recalls:
I listened as he wrestled with the task of taking the measure of his success and failure in life. There came a moment of silence that cried out for testimony. Suddenly I remembered the peach seed monkey, and I heard the right words coming from myself to fill the silence:
“In all that is important you have never failed me. With one exception, you kept the promises you made to me – you never carved me that peach seed monkey.”

Not long after that conversation Sam received a package in the mail. It was a peach seed monkey with a note attached.
“Here is the monkey I promised you. You will notice that I broke one leg and had to repair it with glue. I am sorry I didn’t have time to carve you a perfect one.”
Two weeks later, his father died.
The peach seed monkey became for Sam a symbol of all the promises made to him, all the care lavished on him, all that had been given to him, and that had created him as the human being he now was. It carries his identity, because it carries the story of all that went before. It is a true story because it tells the whole truth, the dream, the good intent, the disappointment, the regret and finally, forgiveness, reconciliation, a resolution.
It doesn’t always work out that way, does it? We have regrets with which we seem to be stuck- injuries we find too hard to forgive, a series of self recriminations with which we live- if only we had “consulted the doctor sooner, listened to our parents, not had that extra drink, chosen a different school, spent more time with our kids, left that job, not been so defensive, said I love you before we hung up the phone…” if only; regrets that cannot change the course of events, repair the damage or heal the broken relationships. And we live with them.
In a representative sample of Americans, researchers discovered that regrets over inaction were more severe and lasted longer than regrets about actions.
Regrets more often than not had to do with situations that couldn’t be fixed. Loves lost and unfulfilling relationships were the most common regrets, followed by family matters. Women had more regrets related to romance than men, while men had more regrets about work than women. People with higher levels of education tended to have more career-related regrets.
I am especially aware of my regret this week that somehow I did not do enough to save the life of Troy Davis. Executed in Georgia on Wednesday night, despite the extreme doubt about his guilt, and the recanting of his accusers, Troy Davis is a reminder that death is final, and no evidence of his innocence can bring him back to this life and his family once that life has been taken away. What more could I have done? I don’t know. Nothing more it seems that would have changed the outcome. And still I carry the sorrow and the guilt.
We are a regret ridden people. So there is great wisdom in the Jewish tradition of the Days of Awe, Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur. It is a time and a way to get right with ones neighbors and friends and family, with oneself, and finally, only then with one’s God. Rosh Hashanah, the new year begins on Wednesday at sundown. There is joy and celebration to welcome in the new year and then eight days of reflection. Eight days to do what Sam Keen and his father did- make relationships right. It is required that we ask forgiveness of those we have harmed, and it is required that we forgive those who ask. All the old baggage that we carry like an albatross around our neck, all that keeps us from meaningful relationships is released. Only then can we go to God with our regrets of omission and commission of our sins against God. God cannot forgive sins against people. For that we must go to the injured party and ask forgiveness. This God, the great God of the Days of Awe is not able to provide us with an end run around the difficult task of owning up to our errors and wrongs against each other. More importantly, this God allows us to do the hard work of acknowledgment, forgiveness and release. This God gives us the space and the time to seek and find our health.
Wilke Au once gave advice to someone wrestling with a difficult decision about what to do. I love the outcome that came to the person who followed his advice. Wracked by the fear of making the wrong decision this person was advised to seek guidance through prayer and meditation, which he did. And much to his shock he perceived God’s response, which was stark and simple.
“I don’t care what you do. My concern for you is the kind of person you become.”
Ouch. It is deeper than choices. It is deeper even than doing the right thing. It is about the person, through that process, we become.
The eight days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur give us that chance, to go deeper, to dive below the surface choices and ask what each choice contributes to the person we become. By the time we are done righting our relationships with people, and by the end of the holy week, if we have done our part righting our relationship with God we will have found ourselves, our true selves, the unadorned selves we are called to be, or at least we will have seen meaningful glimpses. Finally, when the days are done, and we have done the spiritual work of the High Holidays, we may be able to say with May Sarton:
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places,
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“hurry, you will be dead before —–”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
or the end of the poem, is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!…..
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the Sun!

My friends, may this be a time when you can find release from regret, accept and extend forgiveness, grow in reconciliation and find deep within you, the power and the permission to truly become yourself.

Thought for Contemplation: ““The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail.” -Ramakrishna

“Running Before the Winds of Grace”
The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson
First Parish in Cohasset
September 18, 2011
Readings: Shams-ud-din Muhammud Hafiz, What Happens
Billy Collins, Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House

What Happens

What happens when your soul
Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?

What happens? What happens when you awaken to the great Journey of Love?
It sounds mystical, and sometimes it is, but sometimes it is as down to earth as watching your children sleep, or taking out the trash without being asked, this journey of Love.

Just over two weeks ago, three thousand people were sworn into citizenship at the Boston Garden. Our Ed Henneken was one of them. But I didn’t know that at the time. What I knew was that two weeks before, I had received an e-mail telling me that this amazing swearing in of 3000 new citizens was about to happen and in response several local groups had gotten together and thought that it would be wonderful to offer our new citizens the opportunity to register to vote, right on the spot. They put out a call for volunteers.
I was moved, moved by the idea, moved by the opportunity I was being extended to become hospitality itself. What a wonderful way to say to our immigrants, welcome! Welcome!! We are so glad you are here and want to be a part of us. We want you – and want all of you, your ideas, your participation, you part in shaping this our common country. Register to vote, and feel in that act our deep welcome and abiding gratitude for your presence.

The wisdom of Ramakrishna’s words was revealed that day.
“The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail.”

It was one thing to have a ceremony that bestows citizenship. It was another to perceive the winds of grace and raise the sails. To capture the winds of grace and harness their power, it took someone, or some group of someones to think deeply about welcome, inclusion and hospitality. It took someone to think about what would be needed for someone to be able to fully claim and operationalize their newly conferred citizenship. It took someone to figure out that we could extend ourselves and make the deepest act of belonging available, right there, when the moment was most precious and profound.
Our days are littered with such opportunities. The winds of grace glow unceasingly. We only need to know how to read the signs and raise the sail.
None of us knew how many volunteers would take up the call and be there to extend this act of welcome and hospitality. A friend and I got on the train in Swampscott. We saw four other people we knew in the car we entered, two from Beverly, two from Gloucester. When we got to the meeting place we were overwhelmed with joy and wonder. So were the astonished organizers. One hundred volunteers, had gathered, giving their Wednesday to this effort, this simple act of graciousness, that would raise the sails of our commonwealth and our country, to catch the winds of grace and run before them.
Hafiz is no fool. He knows the truth of us. All of this joy and hopefulness will be challenged. We will be disillusioned. Our expectations of each other will be disappointed. Not only will we be disappointed in our new citizens…we will be disappointed in our new President, in our spouse, in our country, in our church, in all of those relationships which began when your eyes and your heart and the cells of your body were ready and willing to take the risk of the great Journey of Love.

First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears

And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep.

But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint.

And so if God is amused, who are we to be so annoyed, or even angry when the disappointment or disillusion happens? Maybe those moments of failure, or disappointment, disillusionment or even disaster are secretly and surprisingly the winds of grace, waiting to be caught, that we might sail more freely, more fully and more joyfully into that great Journey of Love.

Billy Collins gets it. He took a situation that could have undone him, ruined his day and his evening, could have ruined his relationship with his neighbor and cast a pawl over his days and recast it. Instead of digging into that negativity, he raised his sail and ran before the winds of grace.
…
And I can see him sitting in the orchestra.
His head raised confidently as if Beethoven
Had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking
Sitting there in the oboe section barking,
His eyes fixed on the conductor who is
Entreating him with his baton

While the other musicians listen in respectful silence to the famous barking dog solo…

Can’t you just see it? Does it make you smile? You can picture your dog, or your neighbor’s dog, or a dog from your imagination, but that dog sitting in the oboe section, attentive to the conductor’s baton, performing the famous barking dog solo…well it just has to make you smile. Irritation? All gone. Relationships in tact- and even newly forged, between neighbors yes, and even between neighbor and dog. Grace? Blowing. Sails flung wide.

What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world

To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend?

O the Beloved
Will send you
One of His wonderful, wild companions-
Like Hafiz.

Like Billy Collins, like the barking dog, or even like a little boy.

A little boy wanted to meet God. He knew it was a long trip to where God lived, so he packed his suitcase with a bag of potato chips and a six-pack of root beer and started his journey.

When he had gone about three blocks, he met an old woman. She was sitting in the park, just staring at some pigeons. The boy sat down next to her and opened his suitcase. He was about to take a drink from his root beer when he noticed that the old lady looked hungry, so he offered her some chips. She gratefully accepted them and smiled at him.

Her smile was so pretty that the boy wanted to see it again, so he offered her a root beer. Again, she smiled at him. The boy was delighted! They sat there all afternoon eating and smiling, but they never said a word.

As twilight approached, the boy realized how tired he was and he got up to leave; but before he had gone more than a few steps, he turned around, ran back to the old woman, and gave her a hug. She gave him her biggest smile ever. When the boy opened the door to his own house a short time later, his mother was surprised by the look of joy on his face. She asked him, “What did you do today that made you so happy?” He replied, “I had lunch with God.” But before his mother could respond, he added, “You know what? She’s got the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen!”

Meanwhile, the old woman, also radiant with joy, returned to her home. Her son was stunned by the look of peace on her face and he asked, “Mother, what did you do today that made you so happy?” She replied! “I ate potato chips in the park with God.” However, before her son responded, she added, “You know, he’s much younger than I expected.”

A new church year is before us. You may also have other beginnings in your life. This beginning, we have together. The year, like every year that includes life and people and the Journey of Love will be uneven, times of ease and times of difficulty, times of exhilaration and times of frustration. And we want it all. I want it all! Within every event, every relationship, every twist and turn is blowing somewhere, the winds of grace.
Call me greedy, but I don’t want to miss any of it! I want us always ready and able to raise our sails to catch the winds and the breezes. When we rise to the challenge and decisively raise our sails, we might truly awaken our souls, opening our hearts, and feeling the lightness and the joy of running before the winds of grace.
May it be so. Amen.