Yesterday is Pretty Open

a sermon on Radiance by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, June 4, 2006

“Yesterday is Pretty Open”, This is what a clergy friend said to me when we were scanning our calendars…trying to find a time to get together. We were looking ahead days, and weeks, and even months…and both our schedules were ridiculously full. We had no time left…for days, weeks, even months ahead, it was clear that we had already used up all of our time…

The only time that seemed available to us…was yesterday…yesterday- having gotten through all the scheduled things- was now open. At least on our calendar pages.

We didn’t even laugh when she said it; it made some kind of crazy sense to us…the days ahead are way too full, but ”yesterday is pretty open”.

If part of my job as your minister is to “Lead you beside the still waters” then I need to speak today about rest…about finding balance, about approaching the summer with ease.

For it’s not just that our calendars are full…but our minds are always racing, and our phones are always ringing…and we have hurtled through this year at church with amazing celebrations, accomplishments, and joy. And we have cared for busy children, and parents who are ill, and friends in need, we have done our jobs at work, and participated in our neighborhoods and communities…and
We now deserve a well-earned rest.

And it’s not just our personal calendars, or our congregational life that are too busy, too full, too chaotic…it is the state of the world itself.

Many of my 21 year old son’s friends just graduated from college, I asked him to describe how they feel about the world they are now entering as adults…on their own for the first time, the word he offered- the pervasive feeling among them is “over-whelmed”.

And he wasn’t talking only about the challenges of employment, housing, car insurance, and the price of concert tickets…Ethan said that his friends are overwhelmed by the war in Iraq, by the revelations of torture at Abu Grabe, by the continuing crime and murders on the streets close to where they live, by fears of environmental devastation, by the talk of building a wall across our border with Mexico,

by elected leaders who lie to the people, by athletes who build records on illegal drug use, corporate executives who think they are above the law, and teenagers from a privileged high school engaging in armed robbery. The depth of the AIDS epidemic! They are overwhelmed, we are all overwhelmed.

Do we all need a break or what?

And just when we’re planning our trips to the beach, we are reminded, warned, terrified by the beginning of hurricane season! Take my advice, don’t watch the weather channel.

So how do we go into this vacation time, this summer break in routine, this time to slow down, take stock, recharge our energies? How do we let go of the anxiety that is churned in us every morning as we read the newspaper or listen to the radio. How do we care for ourselves, our loved ones, and our planet in light of what we know.

How do we rest without turning our backs on the world or flipping our calendars to yesterday hoping for a rosier picture or a second chance?

I asked Myra to teach us the breathing chant as a way of beginning to slow down….you can sing it yourself in your car…when you wake in the morning…as you take a walk…”When I breathe in, I breathe in Peace, When I breathe out, I breathe out love…you can teach it to your whole family…or your colleagues at the office.

Remember to breathe. Live with Peace and Love. A good starting place when you’re overwhelmed.

We go on vacation on a restless search …we go into strange lands, and different landscapes looking for rest, and for a change. We escape into thick fiction reading, and get up early to bike instead of catching the metro. We play minature golf, and eat ice cream, and mix with crowds and crowds of other seekers.

In part we seek our past, our childhood. A time of less responsibility. We seek longer days, and we hope to escape time itself. No more checking our calendars to see if we can fit in a lunch or a movie. No more waiting up for the evening news. If we buy the newspaper, its more for the crossword than any hunger for news.

We want to put our minds on the back burner…and have more embodied experiences of life. We want to sweat and get sticky with sand. We let our beards grow and our hair dry in the breeze. We want to get back to nature. We sleep outside in tents or under the night sky.

The kids stay up late, and meals take on either the sacramental quality of ritual, or an every man for himself ethic.

On vacation we are drawn to the natural wonders of the world. To the places of immensity…the grand canyon, the Mayan ruins, the mountain rapids, the redwood trees, the vast ocean view.

If this sounds like spiritual questing…then you are listening well. For motivating many vacation trips is the desire to find the perfect place, the spiritually inspiring place, the ultimate ground, the core or center geographically. We go forth seeking the pulse, the wildness, our communion with nature.

Dave and I began our summer like many other locals…we went to the beach over Memorial Day weekend. To Rehobeth. Well it was a little crazy. It was wall to wall on the beach. Why do so many come and fall to their knees at the ocean’s shore. Why do so many collect countless shells, which look pretty much the same year after year. Why kites? Why sandy sandwiches and lukewarm beer?

The sheer number of beach umbrellas, towels and children imply a primal urge…an irresistible pull from the tides themselves…

We come seeking our place in the family of things…our animal nature brought out by the wind and waves and sun. We scan the water for signs of marine life, for dolphins, for whales, for sharks…for connection.

We pick up dead things off the beach. We preserve them.

Without articulating the question, how do we fit in, what is our natural habitat, where do we belong…are there traces of our ancestors here…

Have you noticed that the latest beach craze…growing in recent years, participated in by all ages, is digging holes. Deep wide, terra cotta soldier size holes in the sand. Kids of all ages come down the path to the beach, not with just a small plastic pail and shovel…no they come with child-sized wooden shovels, and picks, enough for everyone….and large bailing buckets. They need wagons to transport all their digging gear….all their drinking water and sunscreen.

Whole families participate in the dig. The toddlers climbing the soft piles of wet sand and jumping into the deepening hole. Sometimes they bury one or another in the hole, less often now, a castle is built…but mostly its just the digging of backyard pool size holes.

And when they come back tomorrow, they begin again.

I saw one parent chastise a small child for digging in someone else’s hole…the girl was simply momentarily confused, mistaking some other family’s abandoned hole for her own.
Honestly how could she tell?

And what are they looking for? What are we looking for?

Buried treasure, a lost city, artifacts, a contact lens? Kids today don’t believe that you can dig through to China- if we didn’t exactly believe it, we wanted to prove it could or couldn’t be done. Not these kids.

It’s all about the digging. The act itself. The sheer physical effort, stretching your muscles (after months at the computer screen), the sense of communal activity, (after riding alone in your car) the illusion of accomplishment,(after a year’s worth of committee meetings) battling the elements, getting your hands dirty, digging, digging, searching, searching,

Making a path…looking for solid ground…making your mark, claiming your own place. Being down on your knees.

In the chaos of the world…in our overwhelmedness…we push stuff away, we must protect ourselves from the onslaught, from the onslaught, of news, of cancer, of war, of rape, of murder, of flood, of global warming, of guilt, of shame, of fear….we hold back, we withhold ourselves from the fullness of life…from our fullness as persons. It all seems too much.

We need to get back to the earth…to the tides, to the wide sky, to the night stars, to our bodies, to a communion with life.

I have a sub-title for this sermon…it’s a sermon on Radiance.

I urge you this summer to go and find your radiance. We have many UU forebears and countless poets and scientists who have laid the groundwork for this search. Emerson, Thoreau, Darwin, Mary Oliver….Einstein, Carl Sagan…Beethoven, Whitman, Dickinson, the Buddha, Jesus…

Find your radiance.

I can't tell you exactly what it is…but I have faith you can find it.

A calmness, a direct connection, a shininess, a intimacy, a softness, a glow. Taoist wisdom speaks of a condition of utter clarity and selflessness as “living midnight”…midnight being a time of sharp clean light…bright stars against a black sky.

Walt Whitman in “Song of Myself” advises…”fall into the arms of the world”. Imagine the world with arms…waiting, waiting to embrace you. Tell that to the college grads…trust, fall into the arms of the world.

Don’t hold back. Let go into your fullness of being. Let the repetition of the tides, the repetition of a melody, the repetition of a chant or a prayer, or the repetition and satisfaction of digging, digging, digging…free you for radiance.

Commit yourself fully to life.
Go Out at Night…experience your own “Living midnight”
Your piece of clarity and selflessness.
Commit your self to communion of body and soul. Get down on your knees.
Live your radiance.

Amen/Blessed Be