This sermon was given on
the
the Rev. Fredric J. Muir.
Married to
Amazement
Last
week, before Isabel arrived, I was telling a group here at the church that I
actually find some comfort in the affirming nature of these kinds of “weather
events.” This is what I meant: There is
so little in our lives that we don’t have control over, or think that we have
control over. But acts of nature like
last February’s blizzard or last week’s Isabel, remind us that there are and
will be significant, tumultuous disruptions to our human-centered view of
living. There have been and will be
periods that force us to pause and assess, and remember that we are merely
passing through this world on a schedule not of our own design or
creation. And in this loss of control, I
take some comfort knowing I cannot plan it all, I am not responsible, all I can
do is sit back, let it happen, and react.
Three reactions during these events –
three reactions to anything in life – are named by Alan Jones and John O’Neil
in their book Seasons of Grace. One is “Damn!” an expression usually associated
with anger or fear; it doesn’t produce anything positive, but often is draining
of your energy. And then there’s the
reaction characterized by “Help!” which they say isn’t used enough; unlike
“Damn!” which isolates you from others, “Help” has the ability to engage you in
a relationship with others. Where
“Damn!” curses life, “Help!” says, I want to live, but can’t do it alone.
Then there’s a third response. It’s this response that Mary Oliver speaks
about in a poem, the poem from which I take my sermon title. She calls her poem “When Death Comes:”
When death comes/ likes the hungry bear
in autumn;/ when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;/
when death comes/ like measle-pox;
when death comes/ like an iceberg
between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of
curiosity, wondering:/ what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything/
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,/ and I look upon time as no more than an
idea,/ and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower,
as common as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in
the mouth,/ ending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and
something precious to the earth.
When its over, I want to say: all my
life/ I was a bride married to amazement./
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When its over, I don’t want to wonder/
if I have made of my life something particular, and real./ I don’t want to find myself sighing and
frightened, or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having
visited this world.
Oliver wants to be amazed; she is
praying and shouting and praising to whomever will listen the third response
named by Jones and O’Neal, which is “Thank you!” As Oliver suggests, they note in the remarks
of their friend George: “… if I am lucky, this sense of amazement is sustained
by gratitude.”
Amazed with what? Gratitude for what? I could, and you might accept, an answer to
those questions just with my saying – “Amazed by, gratitude for, life. As a hymn we often sing says, ‘Life is the
greatest gift.’ And we usually say
“Thanks” for gifts.” Right? Yes, it’s true and that is the right
answer. Life is amazing; it is something
for which I am grateful. And that’s not
enough; I don’t find that a complete response because while we all share the
same life space, our reactions are very different – some are more amazed than
others, some are more grateful than others; some want to be married to
amazement, and some act as though they want a divorce; and some, we know, have
had many, many marriages.
Life is often defined by circumstance
and setting, or let me put it like this, that it’s hard to separate life from
context. If nothing else – and there’s
always a whole lot of “else” – we tend to compare ourselves if not directly to
others then to what we think life should
be, which is to say that we have an idea – some image absorbed from somewhere –
that becomes our expectation. This is
just another way of saying that we shape our world; the stories we tell
ourselves about life and the way living ought to be will, in large ways,
determine our reality, our truth.
If we think and act as though people
are out to get us, they will be; if you believe and respond as though the
community is elitist, it’s guaranteed to be; if you think the church is full of
snobs, likelihood is that your image will be confirmed; if you think and act as
though this congregation is important to your life, it will be. If you believe and live as though life is
amazing, you will be filled with gratitude, and it will change the way you
live, and it will change the world. Is
it a matter of perspective? It can
be. Listen to this story:
One
day a father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to another country
with the firm purpose of showing his son how poor people can be. They spent a couple of days and nights on the
farm of what would be considered a very poor family. On their way home, the father asked his son,
“How was the trip?” “It was great, Dad.”
“Did you see how poor people can be?”
the father asked. “Oh Yeah,” said the
son. “So what did you learn from the
trip?” asked the father.
The son answered: “I saw that we have
one dog and they had four. We have a
pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no
end. We have imported lanterns in our
garden and they have the stars at night.
Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole
horizon. We have a small piece of land
to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight. We have servants who serve us, but they serve
others. We buy our food, but they grow
theirs. We have walls around our property
to protect us, they have friends to protect them.”
With this the boy’s father was
speechless. Then his son added, “Thanks
Dad for showing me how poor we are.”
The way we see and understand the
world will shape whether or not we are amazed; it shapes whether or not we are
grateful. Even under the worst of
conditions. Consider Viktor Frankl, who
I know many of you are familiar with.
He’s author of one of Beacon Press’ best selling books Man’s Search for Meaning, which is in
part a retelling of his concentration camp experiences under the Nazis. Here was a man who lost everything – everyone
in his family, most of his friends, his manuscripts; he was beaten and
tortured; he helplessly watched and listened to atrocities beyond belief. Here was a person who had all the reasons to
be bitter, to turn against life, to cynically laugh at those who spoke of
amazement and gratitude as being shallow and naïve. Yet, here was a man, who during his
encampment was able to write and after was able to live: “I understood how a
man who has nothing left in the world may still know bliss [bliss!]… In utter
desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only
achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in their right way, man can
achieve fulfillment. For the first time
in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, ‘The angels are
lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.’” (Seasons, 137) Frankl was
married to amazement – he lived his life with gratitude. Even under the worst of conditions, Frankl
seemed to have an innate sense that life is a complex integration of ups and
downs, like the old Norse mythical tree, which has a dead and a living side,
and throughout life, as we climb the tree, we will live on both sides. Frankl
acknowledged this and so shaped his world, and since then, the lives of many
others.
How did he do it? How do we live “married to amazement ….
taking the world into our arms”? How do
we learn to live with gratitude? For some,
like Frankl, it is innate: I don’t think that these folks are even aware of how
easily they are filled and live their amazement and gratitude – they appear to
have been born that way. For others –
and I think it may be most of us – it’s something that has to be worked
at. I would suggest that living a life
of gratitude is a spiritual discipline: It takes daily practice, which involves
some key steps, many of which will sound familiar because they are integral to
other spiritual practices. Perhaps I
find the world of nature so affirming because it forces me to practice all
three steps – slow down, pay attention, and give up control. These are prerequisites to amazement and
gratitude.
I think of some car bumper stickers
that I know you’ve seen. They say things
like: “I’d rather be sailing;” I’d rather be playing golf;” “I’d rather be
driving my Harley.” “I’d rather be
playing with my … [name your favorite dog or cat]” Sound familiar? And then there’s one that reads: “I’d rather
be here now.” That strikes me as very
wise, and very to the point: in order to be amazed, in order to have gratitude,
you have to be here, now – and how many of us live everywhere but the present,
anywhere but here now? I’d like to think
that here in church, right now, it’s a time when you can slow down, pay
attention, give up control. You can be
here, now. But I know there are some of
you who are not present at all, but thinking about what happens next: who you’re
meeting for brunch, what football game to watch, what cottage meeting to attend,
and it goes on and on. Our minds race
and we find it just about impossible to ever be here now.
But that’s what it’s going to take to
be married to amazement, to live a life of gratitude – that’s why it becomes
for many a spiritual practice. It’s at
this point that you might consider one of the other responses to life, the
response of “Help!” Not that we’ll have
all the answers, but it will be an opportunity to sit down with others and
reflect on gratitude: Beginning October 27th and for four Mondays
following, I’ll be facilitating a class build around Alan Jones’s and John
O’Neil’s book Seasons of Grace: The
Life-Giving Practice of Gratitude.
The book is for sale in our bookstore and the signup sheet is in the
hallway. For five sessions – once a
month – we’ll explore and talk about what being married to amazement might look
and feel like, and how to get there.
Consider this a proposal, premarital counseling, or the rehearsal.
And now for the really big
question. When you’re amazed, when you
show your gratitude, to whom is it directed?
And how would anybody know? The
serious challenge or issue or problem of God is given some comic relief by the
story of two goldfish debating the existence of God. Reaching no conclusion, one finally
challenges the other saying, “Okay, if there is no God, who changes the water?”
(found in Gilbert, 11.27.94)
And I would answer, Why does it matter
as long as it’s done, as long as there is gratitude. As I said earlier – whether it’s because of
clean tank water, the power of an act of nature, the love of another, or
something else – amazement and gratitude are integral to life and bound to each
other. Practicing both will deepen and
enrich your life, with or without a divine source. In his own words, this is the way former
United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold addressed this issue: “God
does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we
die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance,
renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.”
With our without God, we can be married
to amazement, we can live with gratitude.
It can change your life and it will change the world.
It was on a Sunday afternoon while he
sat in his church’s sanctuary, that my friend and colleague Richard Gilbert,
listened to a string quartet play as part of a concert series. He says that the sun poured into the room,
illuminating their space and the people in it and making the music come
alive. It was a breath-taking
moment. He was moved to amazement and
filled with gratitude. He found some
paper, took out his pen, and, he says, “The words simply emerged – unbidden –
from somewhere deep within.” (11.27.94) Dick refers to himself as “a religious
humanist with a mystical twist.”
The words that Dick penned are the
lyrics to our final hymn, “Thanks Be For These.” Let us sing them as if they were our own
words.
© the Rev. Fredric J. Muir
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