A Matter of Life and Depth
Sermon given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
June 2, 2019
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
I remember the day like it was yesterday. In the morning I made my way around to the various offices tucked into any every available corner or crevice of the building’s basement and extensions to say one last good-bye to the people with whom I’d worked so closely for two years. Following hugs, some extended, others brief, as well as thank you’s and well wishes, I ascended the narrow wooden steps leading high up into the steeple. Emerging through a door at the top, just under the gold leafed dome, I paused and stood silently, taking in the view of the historic town below, something I had wanted to do since my arrival and now, on my last day, finally had time to do. Afterwards, I stopped briefly to take in one last look at the large sanctuary and the smaller chapel down the hall, which, though empty that day, I saw in my mind’s eye filled with people. And I thanked them.
As early afternoon approached I met up with Elaine, the Interim Senior Minister. She and I hugged and walked together down the light-filled hallway to the door. We hugged again. Then I passed the threshold onto the path leading to the parking lot and she remained inside.
As I pulled out of the driveway for the last time, I looked up and fixed my gaze on the reflection in my rear view mirror of the church where I had served as intern minister for two years. I continued to gaze at it as I drove, until it eventually disappeared from sight.
I feel obligated at this point to offer a word of caution:
Don’t try this at home, that is, while driving your own or anyone else’s vehicle.
For although I managed to stay on the road and didn’t hit anyone or any thing, moving forward in a car while staring into the rearview mirror is not a good idea. In fact, it’s just plain bad driving.
That being said, looking back while moving forward is good spiritual practice. As Maggie Smith reminds us, in her poem “Good Bones”, “Life is short.” And that’s true enough. As is the likelihood that most of us here today have shortened our own in “thousands of deliciously ill-advised ways.”
Exacerbating our experience of life’s brevity, is a tendency to talk about and live as if life has but one dimension that matters; one dimension by which it can or should be measured above all else: length.
Think about it.
We routinely ask people how old they or their children are. How long they’ve known someone else or been in a relationship. How long they’ve lived or worked somewhere. Facebook and similar sites plot our lives on time-“lines”. We even term significant events on our lives, milestones, which originally referred to a stone placed along a road to mark the distance in miles to a particular place.
Now, it’s not that length is a completely meaningless way of measuring life, but it has its limits.
Fortunately, it’s not the only way to measure or apply meaning to our lives.
If you go to an art museum, like one in Worcester, the MFA (Museum of Fine Arts) in Boston and even the Clark out in Williamstown…if you go to one of these and go to the galleries with paintings from the late Gothic/Early Renaissance period, roughly the 13th/14th centuries and continue chronologically, you’ll notice a change starting with paintings from the 15th century onward. Around that time they start to go from appearing mostly flat, to having convincing depth.
Perhaps you’ve encountered a painting that looked as if you could just walk into the scene or reach in and pick up an object(s) depicted.
That depth is created by the employment of perspective. There are different types of perspective used by artists to create depth, two of the most common are linear, which you’ve used if you’ve ever doodled a cube in the margins of your notebook in school and atmospheric, achieved by modifying the tone or hue and distinctness of receding objects in a painting.
Perspective in art was developed as artists sought ways to make their subjects appear more realistic, more life-like, and in a sense, whole. For certain styles of painting, then, perspective or depth is a significant measure of a work’s aesthetic and even intellectual value and appeal.
And just as linear or atmospheric perspective adds depth to artistic representations of life, spiritual practice, ritual, and exploration which employ reflection, help us put life in perspective, so to speak, and add depth to our understanding, experience and measure of life. They are ways of looking back while moving forward. Again, a bad driving habit, but good spiritual practice.
For when we put something in perspective time is still moving forward, but we take a step back and often we look back too. We reflect and reorient, notice things we hadn’t seen before.
The practice doesn’t extend our lives, but changes our experience of it, giving it a depth that more accurately reflects a reality we feel but often struggle to articulate.
Reflective spiritual practice is what allows the poet Maggie Smith to declare the world, conservatively, “at least fifty percent terrible”, and yet recognize, even though it so often seems a place only a fool would invest in, with harsh realities she yearns to protect her children from, it nonetheless has “good bones”, the kind of place that, even in the face of expedient cynicism, others and our own, we could make beautiful, if we wanted.
One can imagine, Smith could have easily ended her poem with, “Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world.” And in so doing she would still have managed to effectively capture the dominant ethos of our time. A time marked by regressive politics, the looming threat of climate change, rapidly advancing technology and fatigued spirits. But, absent that shift in perspective offered at the end, “You could make this place beautiful.”, her poem would merely and erroneously confirm rather than challenge the naturalness or inevitability of the status quo, ignoring the vision, determination, and accomplishments of people past and present whose lives were lived and sometimes lost in hope for the benefit of a largely cynical world.
Reflection and a new perspective is also at the heart of a “Litany of Atonement”, today’s responsive reading. Contrary to what some might say, the central concern of the litany is not to remind us of all the ways we fall short, but that we can, by recognizing and naming them, in fact, move on, forgive and begin again. Thus it releases us from the trap or seduction of claiming we are uniquely bad or unworthy and reminds us we are more than any one of our actions, mistakes, regrets, failures…even sins while calling us to remember so too are those we most harshly judge. As the contemporary philosopher Alain de Botton writes in his book, Status Anxiety, “We are all of us detained and bound together by shared vulnerabilities. Beneath our flaws, there are always two driving forces: fear and the desire for love.” The practice of atonement offers us an opportunity to gain a new perspective on the role of each in our lives as well as the common humanity we share with every person, stranger and friend alike.
Other spiritual practices and rituals, public or private, religious or secular solidify memories to help us keep a sense of perspective and consequently depth of meaning where it might otherwise be lost with the passage of time.
The ritual of saying goodbye to the people and spaces in which we have studied, worked or lived, as I described on my last day in Concord, is a way of recognizing and remembering the depth of meaning a people or place has given our lives, that when we recall them later, it will not be merely as a point on the timeline of our lives or careers, but as a relationship to be cherished with gratitude for the ways in which we’ve been shaped and influenced by it.
And gathering with others to talk about a common experience, like grief, parenting, or as some of you did here, aging. Gatherings where we create the space and have the opportunity to hear and reflect on both the similarities and differences of how people approach universal, but often alienating human experiences, can relieve us of our sense of aloneness and give us new ways to understand and respond to our individual experience. Indeed, it is not at all unusual for people who have participated in adult religious education (RE) here to express both a sense of relief in knowing there are others with similar questions, struggles or joys and appreciation for the variety of perspectives people bring.
“Life is short”. A sentiment echoed, lamented, even resented, throughout the ages. But to say that life is short is also to say it is rare and precious.
Faced with a diagnosis of terminal cancer at age of 60, the late Rev. Dr. Forrest Church, shared this observation about life, “The goal is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for.” Adding, “This is where love comes into the picture. The one thing that can't be taken from us, even by death, is the love we give away before we go.”
When we engage in reflective spiritual practice, ritual and exploration, we are essentially giving our attention to someone or something in the world. And attention, as some of the greatest spiritual seekers and sages throughout history remind us, is a form of love…of active, engaged love.
Love that allows the poet to name hard truths yet inspire hope.
That reminds us we are worthy and capable of forgiveness and so are others.
Love that creates meaning to last a lifetime however brief or long our life may be.
And that binds us, one to another, delivering us from aloneness into community.
Love lived as a matter of life and depth.
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
June 2, 2019
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
I remember the day like it was yesterday. In the morning I made my way around to the various offices tucked into any every available corner or crevice of the building’s basement and extensions to say one last good-bye to the people with whom I’d worked so closely for two years. Following hugs, some extended, others brief, as well as thank you’s and well wishes, I ascended the narrow wooden steps leading high up into the steeple. Emerging through a door at the top, just under the gold leafed dome, I paused and stood silently, taking in the view of the historic town below, something I had wanted to do since my arrival and now, on my last day, finally had time to do. Afterwards, I stopped briefly to take in one last look at the large sanctuary and the smaller chapel down the hall, which, though empty that day, I saw in my mind’s eye filled with people. And I thanked them.
As early afternoon approached I met up with Elaine, the Interim Senior Minister. She and I hugged and walked together down the light-filled hallway to the door. We hugged again. Then I passed the threshold onto the path leading to the parking lot and she remained inside.
As I pulled out of the driveway for the last time, I looked up and fixed my gaze on the reflection in my rear view mirror of the church where I had served as intern minister for two years. I continued to gaze at it as I drove, until it eventually disappeared from sight.
I feel obligated at this point to offer a word of caution:
Don’t try this at home, that is, while driving your own or anyone else’s vehicle.
For although I managed to stay on the road and didn’t hit anyone or any thing, moving forward in a car while staring into the rearview mirror is not a good idea. In fact, it’s just plain bad driving.
That being said, looking back while moving forward is good spiritual practice. As Maggie Smith reminds us, in her poem “Good Bones”, “Life is short.” And that’s true enough. As is the likelihood that most of us here today have shortened our own in “thousands of deliciously ill-advised ways.”
Exacerbating our experience of life’s brevity, is a tendency to talk about and live as if life has but one dimension that matters; one dimension by which it can or should be measured above all else: length.
Think about it.
We routinely ask people how old they or their children are. How long they’ve known someone else or been in a relationship. How long they’ve lived or worked somewhere. Facebook and similar sites plot our lives on time-“lines”. We even term significant events on our lives, milestones, which originally referred to a stone placed along a road to mark the distance in miles to a particular place.
Now, it’s not that length is a completely meaningless way of measuring life, but it has its limits.
Fortunately, it’s not the only way to measure or apply meaning to our lives.
If you go to an art museum, like one in Worcester, the MFA (Museum of Fine Arts) in Boston and even the Clark out in Williamstown…if you go to one of these and go to the galleries with paintings from the late Gothic/Early Renaissance period, roughly the 13th/14th centuries and continue chronologically, you’ll notice a change starting with paintings from the 15th century onward. Around that time they start to go from appearing mostly flat, to having convincing depth.
Perhaps you’ve encountered a painting that looked as if you could just walk into the scene or reach in and pick up an object(s) depicted.
That depth is created by the employment of perspective. There are different types of perspective used by artists to create depth, two of the most common are linear, which you’ve used if you’ve ever doodled a cube in the margins of your notebook in school and atmospheric, achieved by modifying the tone or hue and distinctness of receding objects in a painting.
Perspective in art was developed as artists sought ways to make their subjects appear more realistic, more life-like, and in a sense, whole. For certain styles of painting, then, perspective or depth is a significant measure of a work’s aesthetic and even intellectual value and appeal.
And just as linear or atmospheric perspective adds depth to artistic representations of life, spiritual practice, ritual, and exploration which employ reflection, help us put life in perspective, so to speak, and add depth to our understanding, experience and measure of life. They are ways of looking back while moving forward. Again, a bad driving habit, but good spiritual practice.
For when we put something in perspective time is still moving forward, but we take a step back and often we look back too. We reflect and reorient, notice things we hadn’t seen before.
The practice doesn’t extend our lives, but changes our experience of it, giving it a depth that more accurately reflects a reality we feel but often struggle to articulate.
Reflective spiritual practice is what allows the poet Maggie Smith to declare the world, conservatively, “at least fifty percent terrible”, and yet recognize, even though it so often seems a place only a fool would invest in, with harsh realities she yearns to protect her children from, it nonetheless has “good bones”, the kind of place that, even in the face of expedient cynicism, others and our own, we could make beautiful, if we wanted.
One can imagine, Smith could have easily ended her poem with, “Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world.” And in so doing she would still have managed to effectively capture the dominant ethos of our time. A time marked by regressive politics, the looming threat of climate change, rapidly advancing technology and fatigued spirits. But, absent that shift in perspective offered at the end, “You could make this place beautiful.”, her poem would merely and erroneously confirm rather than challenge the naturalness or inevitability of the status quo, ignoring the vision, determination, and accomplishments of people past and present whose lives were lived and sometimes lost in hope for the benefit of a largely cynical world.
Reflection and a new perspective is also at the heart of a “Litany of Atonement”, today’s responsive reading. Contrary to what some might say, the central concern of the litany is not to remind us of all the ways we fall short, but that we can, by recognizing and naming them, in fact, move on, forgive and begin again. Thus it releases us from the trap or seduction of claiming we are uniquely bad or unworthy and reminds us we are more than any one of our actions, mistakes, regrets, failures…even sins while calling us to remember so too are those we most harshly judge. As the contemporary philosopher Alain de Botton writes in his book, Status Anxiety, “We are all of us detained and bound together by shared vulnerabilities. Beneath our flaws, there are always two driving forces: fear and the desire for love.” The practice of atonement offers us an opportunity to gain a new perspective on the role of each in our lives as well as the common humanity we share with every person, stranger and friend alike.
Other spiritual practices and rituals, public or private, religious or secular solidify memories to help us keep a sense of perspective and consequently depth of meaning where it might otherwise be lost with the passage of time.
The ritual of saying goodbye to the people and spaces in which we have studied, worked or lived, as I described on my last day in Concord, is a way of recognizing and remembering the depth of meaning a people or place has given our lives, that when we recall them later, it will not be merely as a point on the timeline of our lives or careers, but as a relationship to be cherished with gratitude for the ways in which we’ve been shaped and influenced by it.
And gathering with others to talk about a common experience, like grief, parenting, or as some of you did here, aging. Gatherings where we create the space and have the opportunity to hear and reflect on both the similarities and differences of how people approach universal, but often alienating human experiences, can relieve us of our sense of aloneness and give us new ways to understand and respond to our individual experience. Indeed, it is not at all unusual for people who have participated in adult religious education (RE) here to express both a sense of relief in knowing there are others with similar questions, struggles or joys and appreciation for the variety of perspectives people bring.
“Life is short”. A sentiment echoed, lamented, even resented, throughout the ages. But to say that life is short is also to say it is rare and precious.
Faced with a diagnosis of terminal cancer at age of 60, the late Rev. Dr. Forrest Church, shared this observation about life, “The goal is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for.” Adding, “This is where love comes into the picture. The one thing that can't be taken from us, even by death, is the love we give away before we go.”
When we engage in reflective spiritual practice, ritual and exploration, we are essentially giving our attention to someone or something in the world. And attention, as some of the greatest spiritual seekers and sages throughout history remind us, is a form of love…of active, engaged love.
Love that allows the poet to name hard truths yet inspire hope.
That reminds us we are worthy and capable of forgiveness and so are others.
Love that creates meaning to last a lifetime however brief or long our life may be.
And that binds us, one to another, delivering us from aloneness into community.
Love lived as a matter of life and depth.
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
