Anticipation: What Are You Waiting For?

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, November 26, 2006

I wanted to title this sermon Desire…but I worried that the word desire would get you thinking in the wrong direction…as I read and reflected this week, I realized that the title should be Desire for the Holy…but there too, I was afraid, we would run into misunderstanding…

Next Sunday marks the first week of Advent in the Christian calendar. It is the beginning of waiting…waiting for Christmas, waiting for the birth of hope, waiting for the family to be together, waiting for the singing of favorite carols, waiting for that special present to be unwrapped.

Advent is also a time of spiritual preparation. How will you, how will we, as a liberal religious community, prepare for the birth of hope in a world so full of grief and loss, fear and violence, war, hunger and disease. How do we prepare for wholeness in a broken and suffering world?

In order to prepare, do we need to know what is coming? Do we need to be certain of what we are waiting for? Each year, songs and sermons, advertising hype and hallmark cards tell us what we should anticipate…what we should expect. They focus on material desires, on secular- warm and fuzzy things like Christmas decorations and expensive gifts and holiday meals. Sometimes they mention service projects.

But spiritual preparation, is of a different magnitude. Spiritual preparation thrives apart from certainty, apart from rationality. We can go deeper when we do not know all the answers.

The date of Christmas was moved to the time of winter solstice because darkness holds a mystery and a promise, because the pagan religions already had celebrations of light and hope. And the people felt a need, a desire, that comes only out of darkness, only when the light of one bright star in the vault of the night sky.. creates a corresponding pulse within. When in the midst of death, life is born…when in the midst of darkness, we sense a radiant light.

Spiritual preparation is an act of faith. Something is coming, something is on the horizon, it is not possible to keep it from coming, therefore, we need to prepare.

Some of what we are waiting for, calls for easy preparation.

But there is something more to acknowledge…something more that we yearn for, something more that we seek, something more that touches us and brings us back to life!

On Sunday mornings I often feel I am speaking two languages. One is the language of rational religion, using words that explain the history of religion, words that teach about religious experience, and encourage religious and ethical action.

The other is the language of non-rational religion, offering spaces for evoking the numinous…that which cannot be explained. In this more spiritual way of speaking, I point to the potential for awe, humility, radiance, mercy, healing.

We can easily prepare for instruction in rational religion. We can study, contemplate, question. It is more difficult to prepare for an awakening of spirit.

So as I anticipate both the darkness of solstice and the candles of Hannukha and Christmas…I prepare for experiences of both rational and numinous religion.

As I prepare I am aware of the common thread of all religious experience which is healing the separations both real and imagined. Religious desire is the longing to be healed, to be made whole, to be immersed, merged, with all Life…to enter Life fully.

To enter life fully is a holy act… evoking awe and trembling, ultimacy and intimacy, acknowledgement of something wholly other…something other than ourselves, but to which, we belong.

What is it you anticipate this season? What is it you wait for in your life? What is your utmost desire?

I visited with Connie Farrell on Friday, she continues her journey with cancer, tired, not eating much…but holding onto anticipation…she loves visitors, she is most happy when her daughter visits…I asked her what she looks forward to…she acknowledged that she doesn’t look too far ahead, but that she looks forward to sitting on the couch watching the sunlight on the patio outside her window. I hear these words as religious desire, that as Connie enters the beauty of sunlight, she is, in that moment, made whole and connected to Life. In spite of many limitations, Connie is not yet separate from Life.

Even that which seems mundane might have deeper significance. I anticipate my next visit to my parents home in rural Wisconsin…and the taste of the Swedish pancakes that my mother always makes for us. The taste of her pancakes is healing to me- for my relationship with my mother has too often felt broken, and I long to feel a part of her.

Sometimes I hear people long for a good nights sleep. That too becomes a need for more than the physical healing of sleep, for beyond the physical is the longing to reconnect to the world of dreams…to the stream of human consciousness and myth making. The place of dreaming is a place of awe and anxiety, of wonder and mystery…it too is a profound connection to Life both rational and non-rational.

In capitalist America, we consumers are encouraged to long for material things, and to anticipate scoring a successful purchase. How could thousands and thousands of young people wait through the night in long lines at the computer stores for the latest video game purchase…or soccer moms drive in bumper to bumper traffic at midnight on Thanksgiving Day to be the first at the shopping mall?

Is there some unmet desire masked by consumerism? Is it that we know of no other way to be part of something larger than ourselves, no other way of feeling alive and experiencing awe and wonder?

Clearly we are all in search. All seekers. All of us filled with desire. It is a fundamental part of our humanity, an old and elemental reality of human nature…to reach for fulfillment, to long for connection, to heal that which is separated and broken within us, to desire that which we cannot name.

I have a deep desire to be my best self. Each day I seek to be less judgmental, more generous of spirit, more loving. Each day I long to do more justice work, to show up where I am needed, to give more of myself to others.

I have a deep desire for a holy moment of connection with the universe. I seek to be faithful to my spiritual practice. I anticipate the full moon and the sunrise and I plan to go out to meet them, but do not. I desire to write poems and praise for the holiness of life. A voice within, an urge, a sensitivity, tells me what I need to do. And yet…

I have a longing for an intimate connection of mutual trust and understanding. I imagine moments of encountering the holy in another person. I reach out again and again. I give gifts and I wait and hope for the right words. Each day I awake and begin again, trying to cross the divide, to span the places of separation. My desire for truth and beauty abides.

This desire is a good thing. I want you all to tend it in yourself…I want you all to know that it is a good and real part of you, a spiritual part of you. Some say that all desire is desire for a union with God or the holy.

Writer Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, in her essay on Eve…suggests that Eve gave us the world as we know the world- beautiful, flawed, dangerous, full of being. Her act of radical curiosity…her willingness to eat the apple, the fruit of the tree of good and evil- that act which cast Adam and Eve out of the garden and into the real world…left as her legacy- the imperative to desire. Because we have known separation, sin, loss, fear, nakedness…so we desire the good, the beautiful, - union with the holy.

So, as we enter the dark of this season, know that something is coming…something is on the horizon. Jan L. Richardson writes: “Darkness can become the tending place in which our longings for healing, justice, and peace grow and come to birth”

Because desire is good, but not sufficient, we wait for something more…something beyond our yearning…something we cannot name.

Let the dark work in you. Tend to your spirit. Dwell on your need for healing and wholeness. And slowly in the weeks of Advent…in the weeks before solstice…trust that what you need will come to you.

Trust that the sun will pass once again across the patio. Trust that sleep will take you to your dreams. Trust that Swedish pancakes will heal some of the hurt. Trust that nature waits for you to walk out into the moonlight, into the dawn of a new day. And trust that this Beloved Community will offer opportunities of holy connection.

I wish you blessings for the coming season, and encourage you to keep the flame of desire burning, anticipate the coming joys of the season, but also leave room for the unexpected. Or in the immortal words of the Rolling Stones…you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might get what you need.

Blessed Be/Amen