Living To The Point Of Tears
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
February 17, 2019
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
The curtain closed and as I stood, I wiped the last of the tears from my eyes. Who knew a story told through the spectacle of outlandish costumes, sequins and pop music from the 70’s onward would leave me tearful at end of the performance?
“You never know what may cause them”, wrote author and minister Frederick Buechner, of tears. “The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you’ve never seen before. A pair of somebody’s old shoes can do it…. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.”
Buechner may not have had Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a musical about two drag queens and a transgender woman traveling the Australian desert together to their next show venue in mind when he said you never know what may cause tears. But, his point is clear. Tears are messengers.
As I wiped the tears from my eyes at the end of the show, their message seemed to echo that of Audre Lorde in our responsive reading, “We were never meant to survive.”
And yet, here we were.
“We”, in my mind at that moment, being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) people. If you’re not familiar with it, the show is unapologetically LGBTQ affirming. And though campy, as one would expect, it didn’t fail to avoid the ever present fear and reality of physical and psychological violence experienced by LGBTQ people at the hands of the state, legal and medical systems, social and religious institutions, not to mention, for far too many, family members and common thugs.
As the days since the show passed, my understanding of who “we”, that is, the we who were never meant to survive, is, slowly expanded.
Indeed, I began to think about soul. For some time now, I have been intentionally listening for and pursuing the intimations of soul. Now, I confess,
I don’t know exactly what soul is. And I’m not alone. As the spiritual teacher and author, Thomas Moore observed in his book, Care of the Soul, “It is impossible to define precisely what soul is. Definition is an intellectual exercise anyway: the soul prefers to imagine.” Further Moore notes, “We know intuitively that soul has to do with genuineness and depth.”
I know then that soul is not ego, which speaks loudly and insistently, even internally and is suspicious of what soul is up to. I think we witness this suspiciousness of soul in our responses, culturally and privately, to people or peoples who seem to listen and respond to intimations of the soul.
I’m thinking now of action taken by Wisconsin lawmakers last week to force the removal of former NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick’s name from a resolution in honor of Black History Month. Kaepernick, you may recall, has drawn both support and criticism for “taking a knee” during the national anthem to protest ongoing racial and other social injustice in the US. Some who have expressed opposition to Kaepernick’s protest argue he’s being unpatriotic; others that he shouldn’t mix politics with sports.
But what if his protest is not about patriotism or politics, but soul?
Soul which reminds us, “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed. But also that when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.”
To be reminded of oppression, injustice, the plight of those who do not look, love, live, speak, or worship like the majority is unpleasant. Often it is inconvenient. The difference is, if we’re paying attention, changing the channel, turning off the tv, or remaining silent, doesn’t make it go away.
The world, the most part, is not a soul affirming place.
This was not lost on Ralph Waldo Emerson who, as we heard in our call to worship, exclaimed, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” Emerson understood in a world of lifeless, soul denying conformity, difference is a form of power, not least of all spiritual power. To be empowered, particularly spiritually, is to listen for and embrace the uniqueness we each possess, to make manifest the longing of soul.
And this is where the “we”…the we who were never meant to survive…becomes much larger to encompass all of humanity striving to hear or follow the intimations of soul.
And, by the way, if you’re getting stuck on the word soul, try and let go of associations you carry that are in the way or try a different word. For what we’re talking about is listening to and living life itself. Not the life your ego or the world is seeking to impose and control, but the life that is asking to be lived, a secret loveliness, if your will, longing to be manifest through you. The life we are often afraid to bring forth for fear it will not be welcomed or honored. The life that gently nudges, “Speak, speak”… reminding us we were never meant to survive. The life that sings, as our choir did, “No one’s voice unheard, no one’s dream deferred, let this be your vow, and then will justice roll down.” (Jason Shelton, composer)
Justice! The refusal to be to erased, silenced or be made something you’re not and instead embrace and live the life of soul, and live it with courage and passion…to the point of tears.
It was the philosopher Albert Camus who advised, “Live to the point of tears.” Camus held that life had inherent worth, even if it had no inherent meaning. But, his urging to live fully, speaks to people across the philosophical and theological spectrum, including to those who believe everything happens for a reason. Like a friend of mine, who came to the United States from Trinidad.
A few years ago her daughter suffered life threatening injures from gunfire. Thankfully, she recovered and is doing well. I saw my friend recently. She’s just completed a degree in nursing and as we were catching up, she shared her desire to divide her time as a nurse between a paid job and a volunteer position in an underserved, underfunded community. She told me her entire outlook had changed after her daughter’s near death. Her words echoing, almost verbatim, Robert Washes’ in our second reading this morning, “For a while I thought I knew exactly what was most important.” Then her daughter was shot.
Before that my friend had worked at a bank and while she didn’t hate her job, as many today seem to, she described having a quiet sense that there was something else trying to get her attention. The near loss of her daughter shook her awake and clarified for her what that something was.
Though soul speaks softly and is not particularly assertive, its voice can be amplified to near deafening levels by events in our personal lives and the larger world.
Thursday was Valentine’s Day. It was also the one year anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida where 17 students and staff lost their lives. In the aftermath, soul spoke, surely not for the first time, to hundreds of thousands, if not more, young people and adults. But this time it was heard and heeded and organizations like March For Our Lives were born.
At the conclusion of her speech at the March For Our Lives Rally on March 24, 2018, survivor Emma Gonzalez told the crowd, “Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job.”
Gonzalez may have been speaking specifically about taking action to prevent gun violence, but her words are no less powerful when applied to soul. For soul, gentle and patient, which speaks to us quietly within and through unexpected tears, often lives, in the words of Audre Lorde, “At the shoreline, standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone.” Its voice a “heavy-footed” worlds hopes to silence. But so long as we are alive and attentive, there is still the chance soul may yet speak aloud in the world through the life we live.
“The chief difference between the universe before and after the [fire]”, wrote Robert Walsh in “Fire at the Parsonage”, “was in the dimension of time. I well know that all the things to which I am connected, loved ones, favored possessions, self, will be swept away in time. But the fire said: now. It may happen now.”
That “we may have no warning, no time to prepare”, prompts Walsh to reflect, “Have we done what we need to? Have we said the words we should say before the opportunity is gone?”And to which I would add… Have we lived to the point of tears?
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
February 17, 2019
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
The curtain closed and as I stood, I wiped the last of the tears from my eyes. Who knew a story told through the spectacle of outlandish costumes, sequins and pop music from the 70’s onward would leave me tearful at end of the performance?
“You never know what may cause them”, wrote author and minister Frederick Buechner, of tears. “The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you’ve never seen before. A pair of somebody’s old shoes can do it…. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.”
Buechner may not have had Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a musical about two drag queens and a transgender woman traveling the Australian desert together to their next show venue in mind when he said you never know what may cause tears. But, his point is clear. Tears are messengers.
As I wiped the tears from my eyes at the end of the show, their message seemed to echo that of Audre Lorde in our responsive reading, “We were never meant to survive.”
And yet, here we were.
“We”, in my mind at that moment, being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) people. If you’re not familiar with it, the show is unapologetically LGBTQ affirming. And though campy, as one would expect, it didn’t fail to avoid the ever present fear and reality of physical and psychological violence experienced by LGBTQ people at the hands of the state, legal and medical systems, social and religious institutions, not to mention, for far too many, family members and common thugs.
As the days since the show passed, my understanding of who “we”, that is, the we who were never meant to survive, is, slowly expanded.
Indeed, I began to think about soul. For some time now, I have been intentionally listening for and pursuing the intimations of soul. Now, I confess,
I don’t know exactly what soul is. And I’m not alone. As the spiritual teacher and author, Thomas Moore observed in his book, Care of the Soul, “It is impossible to define precisely what soul is. Definition is an intellectual exercise anyway: the soul prefers to imagine.” Further Moore notes, “We know intuitively that soul has to do with genuineness and depth.”
I know then that soul is not ego, which speaks loudly and insistently, even internally and is suspicious of what soul is up to. I think we witness this suspiciousness of soul in our responses, culturally and privately, to people or peoples who seem to listen and respond to intimations of the soul.
I’m thinking now of action taken by Wisconsin lawmakers last week to force the removal of former NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick’s name from a resolution in honor of Black History Month. Kaepernick, you may recall, has drawn both support and criticism for “taking a knee” during the national anthem to protest ongoing racial and other social injustice in the US. Some who have expressed opposition to Kaepernick’s protest argue he’s being unpatriotic; others that he shouldn’t mix politics with sports.
But what if his protest is not about patriotism or politics, but soul?
Soul which reminds us, “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed. But also that when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.”
To be reminded of oppression, injustice, the plight of those who do not look, love, live, speak, or worship like the majority is unpleasant. Often it is inconvenient. The difference is, if we’re paying attention, changing the channel, turning off the tv, or remaining silent, doesn’t make it go away.
The world, the most part, is not a soul affirming place.
This was not lost on Ralph Waldo Emerson who, as we heard in our call to worship, exclaimed, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” Emerson understood in a world of lifeless, soul denying conformity, difference is a form of power, not least of all spiritual power. To be empowered, particularly spiritually, is to listen for and embrace the uniqueness we each possess, to make manifest the longing of soul.
And this is where the “we”…the we who were never meant to survive…becomes much larger to encompass all of humanity striving to hear or follow the intimations of soul.
And, by the way, if you’re getting stuck on the word soul, try and let go of associations you carry that are in the way or try a different word. For what we’re talking about is listening to and living life itself. Not the life your ego or the world is seeking to impose and control, but the life that is asking to be lived, a secret loveliness, if your will, longing to be manifest through you. The life we are often afraid to bring forth for fear it will not be welcomed or honored. The life that gently nudges, “Speak, speak”… reminding us we were never meant to survive. The life that sings, as our choir did, “No one’s voice unheard, no one’s dream deferred, let this be your vow, and then will justice roll down.” (Jason Shelton, composer)
Justice! The refusal to be to erased, silenced or be made something you’re not and instead embrace and live the life of soul, and live it with courage and passion…to the point of tears.
It was the philosopher Albert Camus who advised, “Live to the point of tears.” Camus held that life had inherent worth, even if it had no inherent meaning. But, his urging to live fully, speaks to people across the philosophical and theological spectrum, including to those who believe everything happens for a reason. Like a friend of mine, who came to the United States from Trinidad.
A few years ago her daughter suffered life threatening injures from gunfire. Thankfully, she recovered and is doing well. I saw my friend recently. She’s just completed a degree in nursing and as we were catching up, she shared her desire to divide her time as a nurse between a paid job and a volunteer position in an underserved, underfunded community. She told me her entire outlook had changed after her daughter’s near death. Her words echoing, almost verbatim, Robert Washes’ in our second reading this morning, “For a while I thought I knew exactly what was most important.” Then her daughter was shot.
Before that my friend had worked at a bank and while she didn’t hate her job, as many today seem to, she described having a quiet sense that there was something else trying to get her attention. The near loss of her daughter shook her awake and clarified for her what that something was.
Though soul speaks softly and is not particularly assertive, its voice can be amplified to near deafening levels by events in our personal lives and the larger world.
Thursday was Valentine’s Day. It was also the one year anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida where 17 students and staff lost their lives. In the aftermath, soul spoke, surely not for the first time, to hundreds of thousands, if not more, young people and adults. But this time it was heard and heeded and organizations like March For Our Lives were born.
At the conclusion of her speech at the March For Our Lives Rally on March 24, 2018, survivor Emma Gonzalez told the crowd, “Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job.”
Gonzalez may have been speaking specifically about taking action to prevent gun violence, but her words are no less powerful when applied to soul. For soul, gentle and patient, which speaks to us quietly within and through unexpected tears, often lives, in the words of Audre Lorde, “At the shoreline, standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone.” Its voice a “heavy-footed” worlds hopes to silence. But so long as we are alive and attentive, there is still the chance soul may yet speak aloud in the world through the life we live.
“The chief difference between the universe before and after the [fire]”, wrote Robert Walsh in “Fire at the Parsonage”, “was in the dimension of time. I well know that all the things to which I am connected, loved ones, favored possessions, self, will be swept away in time. But the fire said: now. It may happen now.”
That “we may have no warning, no time to prepare”, prompts Walsh to reflect, “Have we done what we need to? Have we said the words we should say before the opportunity is gone?”And to which I would add… Have we lived to the point of tears?
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Proudly powered by Weebly