First Parish Cohasset

Thought for Contemplation: “How rare it is, how lovely, this fellowship of those who meet together.” - Psalm 133

“An Antidote to Loneliness”
The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson
First Parish in Cohasset
February 5, 2012

Readings attached at end: Psalm 139:1-15
Psalm 40:4-10

I had a salesman come to my house to demonstrate an an appliance. It was unusual- in fact the last time I can remember my having someone in for a sales demonstration was in 1976. But I had the time and a mild interest, so I let him come.
He was a nice young man, well-groomed and polite, who knew his product, explaining it clearly and carefully. He was enthusiastic about it, his presentation patter well-rehearsed. I found it mildly interesting. What I found more interesting was the side-patter. In the course of his efforts to establish rapport, he asked me what I did. I told him I was a minister.
Well, that opened the flood-gates for him. He was, it seemed, suddenly more interested in taking about his religion that he was in taking about his product. I listened.
He was an Orthodox Christian; he told me…an assertion he repeated often- an Orthodox Christian. But he didn’t go to church. He has a friend who is a Presbyterian who is always trying to get him to go with him to his church, but our friend the salesman had no interest in that. He thought that churches were a waste of time.
I looked puzzled and curious. “What does that mean then, to you,” I asked. “To be an Orthodox Christian?”
He was thrilled by the question and he told me. He believes in the bible. He studies the bible. He has an on-line pastor who is in Texas. This pastor, he assured me, was extremely well educated. He could understand several languages, including biblical Hebrew, biblical Greek, and Aramaic. Since he could read the whole bible in its original languages, and he was so scholarly and well-informed, this pastor really understood what the original meanings of the bible were, what they meant when they were written, and he could explain that in these on-line bible study classes.
“Oh,” I said, “So with the help of this on-line pastor and his bible study you are able to understand and practice what it means to be a Christian?”
“Absolutely.”
“So there is no need for you to participate in a church of any kind?”
“That’s right. I get everything I need on-line through these bible studies.”
“Well,” I said, “I know that everyone reads things differently in the bible…”
He interrupted me to tell me that that was why this scholar-pastor as so important- because he read it correctly.
I continued. “It seems to me, from my reading of the bible, that the very first thing God did after delivering the people Israel out of bondage was to call them together into a congregation. He didn’t talk to them separately. He talked to them as a congregation.”
The man looked puzzled.
“You see,” I said, “All through the bible, God calls people into congregations. That is how God wants people to be.–in community. All the apostles went out into the world to gather people into churches, where they shared, they learned, they ate together, they worshipped.
The entire story of God and God’s people happens in the context of congregational life. I don’t know how you can read the bible and not know that you need to become a part of a congregation.”
I might as well have been speaking another language. He was not getting my point. He was not understanding that I was challenging his claim to being a biblically observant Christian.
So, since he wanted to stay in rapport with me, as any good salesman would, he changed the subject- slightly. He told me that he was working hard, and earning an income because he was saving up and going back to school. He wants to become a minister.
“Really?” I said. He had recaptured my interest. “And where are you going? To what seminary?”
He named a school of which I had never heard. I said so, and asked about it.
“Oh,” he explained, “It is an on-line school.”
“You are going to learn to be a minister by going to an on-line school?” I asked to make sure that I had understood.
He smiled and nodded. I gave up. I smiled and nodded my encouragement, urged him to get on with the demonstration, and realized that there was no way I would be able to convey to this young man that ministry, faith formation, authentic religious practice require more than a virtual community. That essential to my understanding of faith, was the component of relationship, authentic relationship not only with one’s higher power, but with one’s human co-habitants of this earth and its life. It is one of the reasons I was so drawn to the bible. It is the story of a people, not a person, the story of God’s love, anger, joy and frustration with the whole of humankind, and the intense longing for love to prevail, and relationships be made right.
Clearly the salesman and I had a different faith. We read and interpreted our shared sources very differently. I was troubled for him. And I realized how central the Unitarian Universalist principles are to my understanding of best faith practices, for all of them have something to say about what it means to be a person in right relationship to one another and to our environment. There is something solid about the wisdom of our Unitarian Universalist history and tradition embodied in our principles that insists that being human and being human religiously, is a matter of being human in community.
We came to that understanding initially through our grounding the bible. After all, our forebears, heretics though they be, understood theirs as a biblical faith. They read the book, and came up with truths they perceived to be universal. Among them, that human beings were created to live together in community. The bible teaches it both explicitly and implicitly, since all of the stories are in one way or another, about community life.
Studies have been done on Americans and their relationships. The General Social Survey performed in 1985 found that the average number of confidants Americans had was about 3. These were people with whom the respondent could discuss personal issues or matters of importance to them. In 2004, when the survey was repeated, the average number of confidants Americans reported was down to 2. Twenty five percent of Americans reported that they had no one with whom they could talk about personal matters or matters of importance to them. Let me repeat that. 25% of Americans in 2004 reported that they had zero confidants. And that was back in 2004- following the trend, we can confidently predict that the numbers of people with few or no confidants in 2012 is larger still.
The study further examined the nature of the confidants that people do have. They discovered that the circle of available confidants is closing in on us as a people. In 1985, 57% of the people reported that the only people they could talk to about important matters were within the family. So, of their three named confidants, for 57% of the people, none of them were friends. By 2004 the number of people who could only talk to family members about important matters was up to 80% 80%!
Eighty percent of Americans in 2004 had no friends with whom they could discuss matters of importance to them. And we can see the trend. By 2012 it is likely to be much higher still.
With all of the electronic communications systems we have at our disposal, with cell phones, smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, texting, instant messaging, we have communication – of things that are not important. When I was asking someone about this curiosity she said, “Why would you tell someone something important or personal, when it could easily end up splashed all over the internet?” Sobering. I had not thought of that. My kids are grown. I don’t splash things all over the internet. But her kids are still in school, where the internet is a live wire sending out all kinds of material that quickly goes viral.
“Why would you tell someone something important or personal, when it could easily end up splashed all over the internet?” Sobering. We are so busy “connecting” spending minutes or hours each day on some form of communication device, and still we, as Americans, are profoundly lonely. We are a lonely people. And the tools we are offered cannot address the deep hurt the isolation inflicts. There is a reason why in those deeply moving emotional psalms the speaker says to God:
O Lord you have searched and known me,
You know when I sit down and rise up:
You discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down.
And are acquainted with all my ways. (Psalm 139:1-3)
We want to be known-long for it-always have. We have been writing of the pain of loneliness and the longing to be known for thousands of years.
We dwell in a land and a culture steeped in loneliness, in isolation, in separation. Desperate for connection, for meaning, for the experience of knowing others and being known, people turn to that which cannot nourish them, the electronic communications and quick and easy surface conversation that looks like relationship but does not feed or serve us. We are left alone when the need for a friend is great; bereft, we are alone with our stories. Or so it could be, if we do not extend the effort and accept the risk that comes with becoming part of a community.
The Psalmist calls out joy and pain, angst and gratitude in the context of the great congregation, teaching us: this is a way to manage, this is a way to survive..
My friends, you, here, have taken that risk. You are the antidote to the lonesomeness epidemic. You have created community. Religious community. You have a faith that understands in its core that human beings were not created to be alone, but rather, we were created to share our lives, our joys and sorrows, our gifts and needs. This is the meaning and purpose of religious community.-to help us be fully human in the presence of life, embracing the Great Wonder of which we are a part.
Congregational life can do this. Where else can we gather across generations, interests, affinities, gender, education, class and physical capacities, and be together, not defined by the groups to which we belong, or the positions we have achieved, but accepted as we are, as we have come, without excuse or conditions. You are part of this community because you have shown up and chosen to participate. To the extent that you do so, your loneliness will be ameliorated, the days of your life will be enhanced and you will know what it means to be blessed.
And I wonder about all of those people who are not here, who are not gathered in any house of worship. What are they doing? How will they be sustained? Will they become part of the legions of the lonely?
My friends, you are the antidote to the lonesomeness epidemic. You hold the treasure that need not be secret, and that multiplies when shared. Your light, of hope and faith, of authentic community in which joys and sorrows are shared, your light of acceptance and welcome, is the beacon of salvation, healing the broken and lonely world. It is too precious to hide under a bushel. In these days when there is so much we have been given we need to do more than offer thanks – there is role for us- to offer hospitality to a hurting lonely world.
May there be the peace of safe havens. May there be hope that authentic communities can be forged. May there be love, and an open heart, and may it begin with us.
Amen.
—————-

Reading: Psalm 139:1-15 (New International Version)
You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Psalm 40:4-10

Happy are those who make
the Lord their trust,
who do not turn to the proud,
to those who go astray after false gods.
You have multiplied, O Lord my God,
your wondrous deeds and your thoughts towards us;
none can compare with you.
Were I to proclaim and tell of them,
they would be more than can be counted.

Sacrifice and offering you do not desire,
but you have given me an open ear.
Burnt-offering and sin-offering
you have not required.
Then I said, ‘Here I am;
in the scroll of the book it is written of me.*
I delight to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart.’

I have told the glad news of deliverance
in the great congregation;
see, I have not restrained my lips,
as you know, O Lord.
0 I have not hidden your saving help within my heart,
I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;
I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness
from the great congregation.

Thought for Contemplation- “A sermon can be foolishly spoken and wisely heard” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The Truth Comes Knocking”
The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson
First Parish in Cohasset
January 22, 2012
Readings attached at end:
Matthew 15:21-28
Fault Line by Robert Walsh
the light that came to lucille clifton, by lucille clifton

Come with me to that hot and dusty place, long, long ago. Very different from where we live now, how we live now.
Come with me to that place where there is a young man preaching and teaching a better way to live. A man who is going from town to town, gathering to gathering helping anxious people find a way to manage their lives and even to be happy in difficult and stressful times, times when they do not feel like they have a lot of control over what is happening to them.
Oh, so maybe it is not that different from where we live now, how we live now. His people, a people within a nation, are in trouble. He thinks they need to get back to basics, not back to the law, but back to the reasons why the law was written, back to the moral and ethical principles from which the law was created. He runs into resistance all along the way. The leaders are protectors of the tradition, the tradition as they value, remember and preserve it, even when it seems the tradition is no longer relevant nor is it serving its intended purpose.
The young man is earnest, indefatigable. Goal driven. He is going to wake up his people and get them to claim their power. And his friends, like any good team, support him by doing some of the up-front preparation work, and by protecting him from distractions. As they travel, he and they want to “keep on message.”
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

They are doing their job, his disciples, keeping the entourage moving, on track, on time, focused. Jesus is right with them.
He answered (the woman), “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

Jesus is clear. He knows what he is there for. He is staying on message.
The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

This woman is clear too. She is desperate.

He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

Jesus persists. Disciplined. Clear. Staying on goal, on message. He knows what he is about. It may sound a little harsh, but he’s got to get out of there. Even Jesus, human Jesus, can get irritated and he does. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the cameras were running.
“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
………
the light that came to lucille clifton
came in a shift of knowing
when even her fondest sureties
faded away. …
“you might as well answer the door, my child.
the truth is furiously knocking.”

Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.”

My friends, this is my most favorite of all the stories about Jesus, one of my most favorite stories in the bible. It captures the moment when Jesus “gets it,” when Jesus’ whole world is broken open, when his perceived mission is exposed as too small, when his perceived objectives too limited. “Oh My God!” he surely must have said to himself, if not out loud, when he grasped it, and its implications. “Oh My God!” You don’t want me to just teach peace and justice and good honest governance to my folks here; you want me to tell the world. You want me to heal not only my broken people in my little corner, you want me to offer hope and peace and power to everyone, to the Canaanites and the Samaritans, and to anyone who comes in search.
In that split moment Jesus hears the woman, hears her plea and her challenge and must make a decision.
“you might as well answer the door, my child.
the truth is furiously knocking.”

And he does. He answers the door at which the truth is knocking.
Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

Never again could Jesus dismiss or disregard the issues of those who were not part of his people, Israel. No longer could he turn a blind eye to the suffering of those outside. Jesus’ whole sense of mission and purpose came undone and needed to be reconstructed. Could he do that? Could he become not only a prophet to Israel, but to the world? How wide could he open his door?
It was at this deciding moment that Jesus gave up tribalism and nationalism and understood that God’s compassion, God’s love; God’s yearning for justice was for all of the people, not just Israel. It must have been painful for him when he “got it.”

I find it reassuring to know that I am not the only one who sometimes finds my world view challenged, and my very self cracks open.

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

What could make that happen? Make the plates beneath your life shift? What could do that? Almost anything. The betrayal by a trusted friend, loss of a job or a spouse, or a child.
What could do that? Almost anything. Hitting the lottery, falling in love, being offered an opportunity.
What could do that? Almost anything. Joining AA or Al-Anon, volunteering for something you’ve never done or thought to do before, taking up a spiritual practice.
What could do that? Almost anything. Having someone you love diagnosed with a dreadful illness, being faced with foreclosure, parenthood, grandparenthood, retirement.
What could do that? Almost anything. I can’t name them all, and neither can you, because the essence of the shifting of the plates that under gird our lives, is that it happens. We didn’t know the plates were there, or that they could shift. We thought we were on solid ground, or at least stable ground.
When I felt the call to ministry it was both exhilarating and terrifying. And it wreaked havoc on my life. The rewards are unceasing. The cost was high. I needed to re- craft my identity and my vision of my future and my place in the world. The people I knew would laugh at me. That was my fear. But the truth was furiously knocking. I would fail. The responsibility was too great, the expectations too high. I would fail. But the truth was furiously knocking. It was a weird thing to choose to do. I would lose my friends and my comfortable relationships. But the truth was furiously knocking.
Maybe you have heard it knocking on your door, whatever your truth is. Maybe you have answered it, or maybe you have tried to nail the door shut and cover it with padding to dull the knocking. But in my experience when such truth knocks and you answer, you will find what you need, you will survive, in-tact in your new self; you will thrive; your soul will grow and flourish. And there will be people to help you.
The fault line is scary, but it is not the end.

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

Those words are true. You can trust them. For just as surely as we live on fault lines, we live in community. For just as surely as unsettling truths knock on our doors, the universe holds us in its unshakable embrace. For as long as we walk on the road of life there are others sharing the journey, feeling the tremors, opening the scary doors, proceeding, ever proceeding from love, the ground we walk upon together.
Have courage my friends. You do not do the walk alone.

“Fault Line”

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

When the great plates slip
and the earth shivers and the flaw is seen
to lie in what you trusted most, look not
to more solidity, to weighty slabs
of concrete poured or strength of cantilevered
beam to save the fractured order. Trust
more the tensile strands of love that bend
and stretch to hold you in the web of life
that’s often torn but always healing. There’s
your strength. The shifting plates, the restive earth,
your room, your precious life, they all proceed
from love, the ground on which we walk together.
Rev. Robert Walsh In “Noisy Stones”
…………………
the light that came to lucille clifton
came in a shift of knowing
when even her fondest sureties
faded away. it was the summer
she understood that she had not understood
and was not mistress even
of her own off eye. then
the man escaped throwing away his tie and
the children grew legs and started walking and
she could see the peril of an
unexamined life.
she closed her eyes, afraid to look for her
authenticity
but the light insists on itself in the world;
a voice from the nondead past started talking,
she closed her ears and its spelled out in her hand
“you might as well answer the door, my child.
the truth is furiously knocking.”
……….

Matthew 15:21-28
New International Version (NIV)
The Faith of a Canaanite Woman
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

Thought for Contemplation- ““What kind of a story heals? A story that is loving and true. True because nothing is left out, neither the pain nor the joy. Loving because everyone in the story – narrator, protagonist and characters alike, is seen with compassionate eyes.”

Margaret Bullitt-Jonas Holy Hunger

“A Story That Heals”
The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson
First Parish in Cohasset
January 15, 2012
Reading: from Forgetting is Key to A Healthy Mind, by Ingrid Wickelgren
Attached at end

The Bible was not written for children.
It has lessons from which we all, children and adults alike, can benefit, but the Bible was not written for children.
That means that we chose how we exposure the children to it, the way we tell the stories and the messages we craft for them to remember. Developmental psychology tells us that children cannot take in meanings or messages beyond their capacities. Their developing brains screen out what does not make sense to them. Of course, they can always hear stories, biblical and otherwise that evoke confusion, disquiet or alarm. So we craft our biblical and other story telling to children in such a way as to help them hear the stories, the messages and the questions that are appropriate for them.
That is well and good.
But they grow up. If they have not been invited to re-engage the stories, all they know is what was offered to and received by them as children. The complexities; the nuances; the deep emotional challenges are missing, either because we did not tell them, or because at the age they were they could not hear them. And if the last time that we who sit here as adults heard those stories was when we were children, we are not working with the full deck. We left our biblical education at a certain developmental stage and have only that age view of the bible stories, maybe literal, maybe historical, maybe metaphorical, but certainly less complex and nuanced than we could perceive today with a world of life experience under our belts.
It had been awhile since I went back and read the full story of Jacob and Esau and I was shocked. Shocked by what I didn’t remember. Shocked by the kind of internal and emotional work I needed to do in order to engage the story in ways meaningful, respectful and profound.
In some ways it read like a bad soap opera. And I knew that characterizing it that way was not going to help me learn from it, and neither would it help me to help you.
Margaret Bullitt-Jonas offers exactly the right challenge.
“What kind of a story heals? A story that is loving and true. True because nothing is left out, neither the pain nor the joy. Loving because everyone in the story – narrator, protagonist and characters alike, is seen with compassionate eyes.”

Can we read the story, hear the story in that way? With compassionate eyes?
Isaac and Rebekah had two sons, fraternal twins, Esau the first born and Jacob, the second. Isaac loved Esau and Rebekah loved Jacob.
Esau grows up to be a hunter and Jacob a quiet man, who stays home in the tent. One day Esau comes back from hunting, tired and famished. Jacob is cooking lentil stew. Esau asks for some, saying that he is famished. Jacob offers to give him something to eat in exchange for Esau’s birth right. Esau, painfully hunger and tired says” “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” And he agrees to the deal.
There is a famine in the land. They move to Gerar. Because Rebekah is very beautiful, Isaac worries that they might kill him to take Rebekah. So he says that Rebekah is his sister. He is seen fondling Rebekah and is confronted about such behavior with a sister. He confesses that she is his wife. The King, Abimelech takes pity on him and promises him protection.
Isaac prospers- generating envy. Fast as he digs wells for his flocks, they fill them up with earth. Finally he gives up and they move to Beer-sheba. Isaac grows old and blind. Perceiving death’s coming, he asks Esau to go hunt game for him, prepare a savory meal and bring it to his old father. He will then enjoy the food Isaac had caught and prepared and will in turn bestow his blessing on his son.
Rebekah, who loves Jacob best, overhears this and runs to tell Jacob to kill two choice kids. She will prepare the savory meal just as Isaac likes it. She tells Jacob to put on Esau’s clothes so that he will smell like Esau to the blind father, and she puts animal skins on his hands and arms and neck to disguise his smooth skin, so that Isaac will feel it, and knowing that Esau is a hairy man, think it is Esau.
Jacob does all this. When his father asks who it is that is bringing him this meal, he says it is Esau. Isaac is suspicious, aware that the voice sounds like that of Jacob, so Jacob lets him feel his hairy hand and smell him. Finally convinced, he gives Jacob his blessing, believing he is blessing Esau. When Esau returns with the game, prepares the meal and bring it to his father it is too late. ‘If this is you, Esau. Who was that to whom I gave my blessing?’ It was Jacob; but he tells Esau he cannot undo it.
Esau, after crying out in anguish swears revenge. When his father is dead, he will kill Jacob. Rebekah hears this and warns Jacob to leave, to go live with her brother Laban in another land, which he does.
So the two brothers each go off to seek their fortune and create their own life- Jacob with the inheritance and blessing out of which he has swindled Esau, and Esau, starting out from scratch.
There is so much about this story that is troubling. It is filled with deceit, manipulation and self-serving behaviors. It is hardly what we thought we‘d encounter from our esteemed forebears.
And the challenge of Margaret Bullitt-Jonas rings clear:
“What kind of a story heals? A story that is loving and true. True because nothing is left out, neither the pain nor the joy. Loving because everyone in the story – narrator, protagonist and characters alike, is seen with compassionate eyes.”

I realize she is right. The narrator of this story is dispassionate. The whole truth is told, the joy and the pain, the love and the hurt. None of the characters are judged, but rather told from their own point of view, compassionate. Could we do that?
My first response was to feel compassion for Esau, even if he was foolish enough to sell his birthright for a bowl of lentils. And compassion for Isaac who was tricked.
But we know that Isaac sometimes felt justified in deception himself, saying Rebekah was his sister. And we know that he was as responsible as was Rebekah for that dysfunctional family dynamic. Ahhh, every character has faults.
This then is a family story of betrayals and selfishness. Why are we reading it? Why should we know it?
The answer came to me almost as soon as the question. Because it is true. Historically factual? I have no idea. But I know it is true. Because we are each victims of deceit and betrayal. Because we are each at some times deceivers or betrayers. I don’t like it. I don’t like to be pushed to find compassion in my heart for deceivers and betrayers. I don’t like it because when I really open up and emotionally embrace them with compassion, I realize that it is my own self I am embracing, the self I deny, ignore, forget. The self that lied, manipulated, finagled to get what I wanted, or believed that I need. The frightened child who fears the loss of parental love and abandonment and holds a sibling responsible. The frightened adult who lives with the haunting fear that they are not accepted or acceptable, who will do anything, or almost anything to discredit one who might have the power to shut us out.
Sibling rivalry. It is as old as humanity. As deep as any terror about survival. We struggle with it in our families. And we struggle with it amongst the nations and within our nation.

Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The civil rights movement was a recap of the liberating journey stories, not only the Exodus, but this earlier story. Our nation was started by white folks who believed that they were God’s chosen, their kind had received the blessing. Race, white or not-white, was an indicator to them of God’s blessing or disfavor.
But there are biblical stories that challenge that. In the Genesis stories of Adam and Eve, and of Noah, we are presented again and again with the biblical assertion that we are all descended from the same gene pool. Five thousand years later we have DNA evidence that this is factually true as well as existentially true.
The resistance to knowing this runs deep. It is easier to divide the world into good guys and bad guys, them and us.
Racism is a toxic legacy we have inherited from the self-serving mis-understandings of our biblical heritage.

It is the depth of the anguish of sibling rivalry and the fear of being shut out or left out, that is often the existential anxiety that motivates all kinds of aggression, from bullying in the playground, to manipulations by Wall Street…the fear that ultimately there will not be enough resources to go around, and the only way to assure survival is to hog and hoard them.
It is why I am a Universalist. Any other world is too scary for me. Presses me into attitudes and behaviors I find not only painful, but abhorrent. I need to believe that everyone who is born into this world belongs here. That no one needs to justify their right to exist. That there is enough love in the universe to hold everyone, everyone, even you…even me.
So Jacob and Esau each made their own lives and discovered that their well being does not need to be predicated on the other’s demise. They learn; they develop their own identity, their own relationship with God. And they begin to feel the weight of the loss of one another. Instead of anger, they feel longing, longing for healing, for reconciliation, for repair of the bond they once knew as brothers. They long to feel the love of family cleansed of the toxic jealousies.
…Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And they wept. Then Esau looked up and saw the women and children. “Who are these with you?” he asked.
Jacob answered, “They are the children God has graciously given your servant.”…
Esau asked, “What’s the meaning of all these flocks and herds I met?”
“To find favor in your eyes, my lord,” he said.
But Esau said, “I already have plenty, my brother. Keep what you have for yourself.”
“No, please!” said Jacob. “If I have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift from me. For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably. Please accept the present that was brought to you, for God has been gracious to me and I have all I need.” And because Jacob insisted, Esau accepted it.
Then Esau said, “Let us be on our way; I’ll accompany you.”

Studies tell us that there is such a thing as healthy forgetting. That people who are resilient, who are able to live in the present with a hopeful eye to the future know what is worth remembering, and what to forget. Forgiveness comes easier. Their burdens are less. What is the point of holding on to that which cannot be changed? Why step back from the joy of love, because once it was lost?
This family’s journey took them through difficult times. They came through in tact, the rupture repaired, their hearts healed. We can too.
We can forgive others and we can forgive ourselves. When we let go and forget, we are free to risk and to love. Finding peace, peace at last, we offer it to others and begin to heal our world. Amen.

Forgetting is Key to a Healthy Mind
By Ingrid Wickelgren | Friday, December 23, 2011, Scientific American | Excerpted
…. (According to)
cognitive neuroscientist Benjamin J. Levy . “The problem with our memories is not that nothing comes to mind—but that irrelevant stuff comes to mind.”

The act of forgetting crafts and hones data in the brain…. It enables us to make sense of the world by clearing a path to the thoughts that are truly valuable. It also aids emotional recovery. “You want to forget embarrassing things,… “Or if you argue with your partner, you want to move on.”…
In recent years researchers have amassed evidence for our ability to willfully forget. They have sketched out a neural circuit underlying this skill…

The emerging data provide the first scientific support for Sigmund Freud’s controversial theory of repression, by which unwanted memories are shoved into the subconscious. The new evidence suggests that the ability to repress is quite useful. Those who cannot do this well tend to let thoughts stick in their mind. They ruminate, which can pave a path to depression. Weak restraints on memory may similarly impede the emotional recovery of trauma victims. …
The ability to forget, however, is not immutable. If you practice applying your mental brakes, unwanted memories tend to fade.
…
For most people, the concept of forgetting conjures up lost car keys, missed appointments and poor scores on exams. Worse, it augurs dementia. Psychologists traditionally shared this view, and most of them studied memory with an eye toward closing the cracks through which knowledge can slip…. In the early 1900s Freud proposed that people tend to block out negative recollections as a defense mechanism…. individuals need to revisit these memories to promote psychological recovery.

An early challenge to that downbeat view of forgetting emerged in 1970, when psychologist Robert A. Bjork, …reported that instructions to forget some learned items could enhance memory for others. Forgetting is therefore not a sign of an inferior intellect—but quite the opposite. The purpose of forgetting, he wrote, is to prevent thoughts no longer needed from interfering with the handling of current information—akin to ridding your home of extraneous objects so that you can find what you need. “When people voice complaints about their memory, they invariably assume that the problem is one of insufficient retention of information,” Bjork wrote. “In a very real sense, however, the problem may be at least partly a matter of insufficient or inefficient forgetting.”

…For the average person, the ability to forget goes up and down over the years just as executive function does. … memory suppression improves between age eight and 12, when it approaches the level … in young adults. At the end of life, forgetting again becomes more difficult. In a study published in 2011 …elderly adults had more trouble than those aged 18 to 25 keeping an experience out of consciousness when reminded of it. “Kids and older adults have a hard time getting rid of this stuff,” …As a result… both age groups may have particular problems recovering from unpleasantness in life.

© 2012 Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc. View Mobile Site All Rights Reserved.

Thought for Contemplation- “The future will ask us not how many we are, but what values we represent.” 16th century Transylvanian Unitarian minister

“What Are We Doing Here?”
The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson
First Parish in Cohasset
January 8, 2012
Readings: attached at end
Exodus 16:1-3, 18:1, 5-27
Excerpt by Suzanne Meyer

“What are we doing here? What is our business? “
So asked Rev. Suzanne Meyer.
These are not idle questions. They are questions I ask myself regularly. Maybe you do too.
“What am I doing here? What is my business?”
The questions surprise us, unexpectedly grabbing hold, sometimes wreaking havoc on our lives, or on the lives of those with whom we live. When we are ready to ask them, it may not be the right time for those with whom we share our lives and our journeys.
“What are we doing here? What is our business? “
I venture to say that while there may be “good” times to ask, there are never convenient times, because the answers always carry the likelihood of confusion and even disruption in their wake.
“What are we doing here? What is our business? “
These are not only questions for us individually. Oh no. Our company is legion. These questions plague, or save, our common lives as well. We deal with them as families.
“What are we doing here? What is our business? “
Essential questions to ask when we are making difficult, life shaping or life changing decisions.
Is the purpose of this family to make money? To offer comfort and sanctuary from a dangerous world? To provide strength and encouragement to live meaningfully out in the world? To climb a ladder of status or wealth? To raise wise, healthy children? Compassionate children equipped for life?
Is the purpose of the family to help each person find satisfaction and fulfillment? To support each other so that together we can create a meaningful and satisfying life? To work together to make the world a better place? All of the above?
“What are we doing here? What is our business? “
What is our calling? Our mission? Our responsibility?
For many years that was a very difficult question for me, generating decades of angst. I had had an accident when I was four years old which, by all calculations should have killed me. But it didn’t. I survived. That survival had a cost. From the time I was four until I was thirty three I lived with the question “For what had I been saved?” What was my purpose in life? How could I pay back or justify my having lived? While I came to understand that there was no justifying or paying back of the favor of life, I still had to grapple with the remaining challenge. What was the purpose of my life?
Not everyone has such a dramatic encounter. Yet each of us at some time and in some way asks the question: What is the purpose of my life? Sometimes we ask it early and let its answer shape our journey. Some of us are not faced with it until quite late in life. And always, the answer is multi-leveled. We have a purpose as individuals, and we have a purpose as part of a community, a group, a people. Each shaped by values we cherish and protect, or not. Each in turn, shaping us. And we as members of these communities contribute, by our actions or by our silence, our answers to the questions:
“What are we doing here? What is our business? “
Our country is in the midst of struggling with these very questions. They are not trivial. We are wandering around in a wilderness, a terrain we do not know and for which we are having to make up answers and strategies as we go along. The experts have suggestions, but they are as often contradictory as not.
I find it comforting to read the stories of our forebears in such times. The bible if nothing else, is the story of a people’s journey, of its struggles to achieve freedom, and then to live justly within it, of its struggles to articulate an ethic and be guided by it, to manage their communal lives and learn how to self govern and regulate in a way that was fair, just and sustainable. They didn’t have much to go on, our forebears. Pharaoh was not much of a model. But he was what they knew. Could they, a people born in slavery and under oppression, learn how to live in a way that was respectful, empowering and validating of all? Or would the stress of the difficulties, the hunger, thirst, and homelessness cause them to retreat from the opportunities and challenges of freedom, to the security that came with a controlled environment, though it be slavery?
As we can see from the text, the temptation to withdraw into the protective security of slavery was ever present. Resisting it as a full time job for Moses. The Ten Commandments served as their mission statement, their moral compass, their guide. And every time they were tempted to withdraw from this difficult task of self-governance and freedom they had those Ten Commandments, like our nation’s constitution, to get them back on track.
They also had something else. A willingness to learn from a foreigner. Moses’ father-in-law Jethro is a wonderful character. He surprises us.
He shows up on the scene when Moses is trying his best to be a leader, a judge, mediator and comforter. Moses is exhausted, but driven by his sense of purpose and responsibility. Jethro, who is not of the community but a priest of a different religion in a different nation, and who we would expect has nothing to offer this fledgling people who are trying to do a new thing that has not been done before, this foreigner, with no reason to be invested in the success of their social experiment, perceives the impending demise and with that perception, discerns a solution…a solution he shares with Moses.
… “What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be the people’s representative before God and bring their disputes to him. Teach them his decrees and instructions, and show them the way they are to live and how they are to behave. But select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you. If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied.” (Exodus 16:17-23)

Delegate. Trust your folks. You don’t have to do everything yourself. Train them in the things they need to know to do the work of governing, and let them do it. Moses, let go. The people can be wiser than you know.
Jethro, priest out of Midian, comes to the Hebrew people and teaches them the essential infrastructure of a self governing people. And then he leaves. He actually practices what he preaches. He taught what he had to teach, and then he trusted them to carry on. He did not need to stay and force it on them or micro-manage. Oh, their governance might look different when finished from what he imagined, but it would be theirs, appropriate for them, and it would serve them.
Moses and his people wandered lost, confused and often frightened for forty years. Forty years before they were allowed to enter the Promised Land. Why? Because it took them that long to learn how to be a people. It took them that long to develop an identity, an ethos that bound them and an infrastructure that would allow them to carry on and sustain their life together in their new environment, in the face of hardship and challenge so that they would cleave to freedom, even in the face of uncertainty. Why forty years? Because by the time they were ready to enter the promised land there were no longer any people in the body who remembered living in slavery, no body left who would romanticize it, long for it, wish for the good old, easy days when they did not have to decide things for themselves and face the consequences. Nobody left who could in the stupor of foggy memory imagine that the Pharaoh had been a good old boy.
Sometimes I wonder what the old slaveries are that I nostalgically look back on in my life when I fantasize about the good old days. Was it worth the price of uncertainty, insecurity and confusion, to live in the land of adult freedom and responsibility? For some folks those days of romanticized un-freedom are from childhood, when needs were taken care of. For some it was the time of wild and careless adolescence or young adulthood, playing with drugs, alcohol or unprotected sex. Some folks got caught. Some died. And some of us managed to grow up alive. It was the illusion of freedom, of course that we had then, because always there are consequences. And during those years of wandering about in the wilderness we learned to value the kind of freedom that comes with structure and responsibility. But it probably wasn’t easy. Maybe is it is still a challenge. For surely our journeys are not yet over, and our anxieties still ride high.
What we learn from the Exodus story about journeying personally and as a people is also wisdom for us here as a congregation. Two years of transition time is not very long to wander when compared to the forty years of the Hebrews. But it is long enough to do some of the work that needs to be done, to answer the questions,
“What are we doing here? What is our business? “
You have one good answer.
We welcome all to our inclusive spiritual community.
We affirm our Unitarian Universalist Principles and put them into action by
worshipping together, caring for one another and working for a safe, just and sustainable world.
The challenge and the charge is to embody that mission in all that you do, you think, and you decide together. It is a mission to be lived, deeply and fully. For it is a mission of salvation. Salvation, “…a state of wholeness, of health It occurs in this lifetime when we are at peace with ourselves, united with one another and in harmony with nature.”
Salvation, it is the work of a community, the work of a lifetime.

It is what we are doing here. And it is precious indeed.

Readings:
Exodus 16:1-3
The whole congregation of the Israelites set out from Elim; and Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they’d departed from the land of Egypt. The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

Then the Lord heard their complaining and rained food from heaven and each day the could go out and collect it, but they were not to collect any more than they needed for that day. Those who tried to take more than their need for one day found the next day that the food they had saved had grown foul.

Then as they traveled the wilderness of Sin, they traveled by stages and camped a Rephidim but there was no water and the people quarreled with Moses. “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall Id o with this people? The are almost ready to stone me.” (17:4) So the Lord told Moses to take his hand on the staff with which he had struck the Nile and told him to struck the rock of Horeb. When Moses did that water came forth. (summary 16:4-17)

Exodus 18:1, 5-27
1 Now Jethro, the priest of Midian and father-in-law of Moses, heard of everything God had done for Moses and for his people Israel, and how the LORD had brought Israel out of Egypt.
5 Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, together with Moses’ sons and wife, came to him in the wilderness, where he was camped near the mountain of God. 6 Jethro had sent word to him, “I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you with your wife and her two sons.”
7 So Moses went out to meet his father-in-law and bowed down and kissed him. They greeted each other and then went into the tent. 8 Moses told his father-in-law about everything the LORD had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel’s sake and about all the hardships they had met along the way and how the LORD had saved them.
9 Jethro was delighted to hear about all the good things the LORD had done for Israel in rescuing them from the hand of the Egyptians. 10 He said, “Praise be to the LORD, who rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians and of Pharaoh, and who rescued the people from the hand of the Egyptians.

13 The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening. 14 When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, “What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?”
15 Moses answered him, “Because the people come to me to seek God’s will. 16 Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and instructions.”
17 Moses’ father-in-law replied, “What you are doing is not good. 18 You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. 19 Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be the people’s representative before God and bring their disputes to him. 20 Teach them his decrees and instructions, and show them the way they are to live and how they are to behave. 21 But select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. 22 Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you. 23 If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied.”
24 Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything he said.
25 He chose capable men from all Israel and made them leaders of the people, officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. 26 They served as judges for the people at all times. The difficult cases they brought to Moses, but the simple ones they decided themselves.
27 Then Moses sent his father-in-law on his way, and Jethro returned to his own country.
We Are All About Saving Souls
Suzanne Meyer excerpted from Quest, January , 2012

What are we doing here?
What is our business?
The answer is simple: we are in the business of saving souls. …

Those of us who have had any brush with evangelical religion … are apt to have an instantaneous negative reaction to that… Soul saving? Our business? Not us!

But make no mistake about it. I make no claim that we are in the business of rescuing men and women from some afterlife spent in a … place of torment … I don’t make any claim to know what happens … after the death of the body….

But I do know something about private hells in which living men and women dwell every day. These are small personal hells of meaninglessness, banality, and loneliness. Hells of shame, hells of guilt, hells of loss, hells of failure. There are as many of these kinds of small hells as there are people who live in them. And from some of those hells, we, as a church, can and do provide a kind of salvation, a release, or at the every least, a respite. We are in the business of saving souls from those kinds of small, individual hells of despair and disappointment that drive people into exile and isolation, separated from community as well as from their own essential goodness.

There are many people who come to us every day who are not here because they are looking for Unitarian Universalism,…They are here because they feel lost, lonely and hurting inside, even though they might appear to all the world to be just fine….

They have no particular interest in …any brand of religion…They just know they’ve …tried everything else; alcoholism workaholism, drugs, therapy, self-help books, self-help groups. …

People come here not even knowing what it is they are seeking. You don’t even have to know what it is you are looking for to feel the need to set off in search of … something more to life. It is not the fear of dying that compels people to go looking for something more in their lives: it is the fear that they may not really be fully alive. You can have everything you want and need and yet find little meaning in life. You need salvation.

…If that word makes us flinch, it is because we’ve allowed other people to steal the original meaning away from us. We have forgotten what salvation originally meant. “Salvation is …a state of wholeness, of health. It occurs in this lifetime when we are at peace with ourselves, united with one another, and in harmony with nature.”
…
We are saved at last by the fellowship of people no better or worse off than we are. What liberates us from those tiny hells in which we dwell all alone is as common as a handshake, as ordinary as hearing your name spoken by another, as simple as being asked to share your thoughts.
We are one another’s salvation.

Suzanne Meyer, excerpted from Quest, January, 2012
Used Cohasset, 010812

Thought for Contemplation: A Christmas candle
is a lovely thing
It makes no noise at all
And softly gives itself away.
-Eva Logue
“Emmanuel”

the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson
First Parish Church in Cohasset
Christmas Eve
December 24, 2011

Merry Christmas my friends; and all of you on this magical night are my friends, the night when we welcome the stranger, the homeless, the complacent and the confused. The night we welcome what is waiting to be born. Maybe it is you we welcome, you who have sometimes been the stranger, sometimes felt without a home, sometimes felt unconscionably complacent or unsettlingly confused. Maybe you too have felt at times, that even you, the essential you, the you that you were called to be and for which you have been waiting, is about to be born. The divine within you waiting, waiting to be born. Come then into Christmas, the birthing time of love and light, of wonder and of miracle, generosity and grace. It happens all the time. It happened to Roy Angell’s college friend Paul.
Paul had received a new car as a pre-Christmas present. Pretty special. He was happy, if a bit preoccupied. It was Christmas Eve. Paul came out of his office when he saw a street kid walking around his shiny new car, admiring it. “Is this your car, mister?” he asked.
Paul nodded. “My brother gave it to me for Christmas.”
The boy looked astounded. “You mean your brother gave it to you, and it didn’t cost you anything? Boy, I wish…”
He hesitated, and Paul knew what he was going to wish. He was going to wish he had a brother like that. But what the boy said jarred him down to the very heels of his feet.
“I wish,” the boy went on, “that I could be a brother like that.”
Paul looked at the boy in astonishment and then said impulsively “Would you like to take a ride in my car?”
“Really? I’d love that!” answered the boy.
After a short ride the boy turned to Paul and with his eyes aglow said, “Mister, would you mind driving by my house?”
Paul smiled a little. He thought he knew what the boy wanted- to show his neighbors that he was riding in a big new fancy car. But he agreed. After all, it was Christmas Eve.
When they were by the boy’s house the child asked “Will you stop where those two steps are?” Paul did.
The boy ran up the steps and in a bit Paul heard him coming back, but he was not coming back quickly. He was carrying his handicapped little brother. He sat the little boy down on the bottom step, squeezed on up to him and pointed to the car.
“There she is Buddy, just like I told you upstairs. His brother gave it to him for Christmas and it didn’t cost him a cent. And someday I’m going to give you one just like it. Then you can see for yourself all the pretty things in the Christmas windows I have been trying to tell you about.”
Paul got out and lifted the little brother to the front seat of the car. The shining-eyed older brother climbed in beside him and the three of them began a most extraordinary holiday ride to remember.
Paul had begun Christmas Eve as a recipient. He finished Christmas Eve as generous giver. Paul had begun Christmas Eve preoccupied with himself and his plans. By the end of the short evening Paul’s mind and heart were turned, re-oriented, opened to a way of being he had never considered. When I read this story, it happened to me too. And it has stayed with me over many years.
I don’t usually remember the whole story. I don’t remember Paul. I had to look it up to get the details. But what I do remember is the street boy’s dream- to be a brother like that. To be able to give. To be able to make another’s life better, richer, fuller. To be a brother who loves with all he has- not just words or gifts, but with a fullness of his being, a brother who wants only the well being of his sibling. I want to be sister like that. Sometimes it is hard.
I am not sure what it is that empowered this child to know this desire so clearly, to chose it with such fixed determination and passion, to embrace it as the essence of his own being- to be a brother like that, one who loves without holding back, who gives without strings, who wants another to be well and to be happy. For Paul that night the little street boy whose name we do not know, was the Christ child, awakening and birthing a heart he didn’t know he had.
Who might be the Christ Child for you this evening? A stranger in the street? A person in your pew? The writer of a note in a Christmas card you opened? Someone at home?
They say that God was born with us this day to come. Immanuel. And we say it over and over again. He was not born once. Every year he comes again, every year he shows up where we least expect it- in a stable, on the street corner, in the all night coffee shop or pharmacy, at a rest stop on the highway on the way to grandma’s. Who ever it is, whatever it is that frees us from fear and emboldens us to love, is God with us, Immanuel.
And sometimes it really is us, for we too can be the Christ child, God in us. Alleluia. Amen.