Saints We’ve Known
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
November 7, 2021
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Recently my mother-law’s eye glasses were lost. It’s the only pair she has and so a frantic search ensued. My husband, her grandchildren, and several staff members of the nursing home where she lives all joined in to search high and low but alas could not find them. Then, a few days after they went missing and the search had been exhausted a text message came from the social worker at the nursing home. “I prayed to St. Anthony. We found the glasses.”
Based on her text, I would not be surprised to learn the social worker also has a St. Christopher medal hanging from the rearview mirror of her car. Perhaps you’ve heard or even utter yourself the petition, “Saint Christopher protect us.”
While some find the very idea of saints, let alone the petitioning of them for help in finding lost objects or protecting us against danger, silly, others, like the social worker at my mother-in-law’s nursing home, take them quite seriously. And even if you don’t have an opinion either way or don’t otherwise concern yourself with them, saints are all around us.
Their names adorn churches in every town, and a fair number of streets too. Indeed some towns are themselves named after saints, islands and mountains too. And hospitals….plenty of hospitals bear their names as do clinics, and schools, and cemeteries. Statues of them adorn buildings and gardens both public and private, sacred and secular. Most bookstores will have a title or two if not more devoted to one or many. And museums are full of them in just about every medium and from multiple ages of human history. Indeed they’re kind of hard to avoid.
We even reference them in popular speech…describing an especially good, but often beleaguered person, as “sainted” or as having, “the patience of a saint.” Phrases that suggest we know one when we see one, even if our tradition or personal beliefs don’t otherwise recognize them in some formal or official manner.
And when we do see one what we may very well “see” or are responding to is some quality that makes them stand out in the crowd, so to speak. This is true of official as well as unofficial saints. Now, popular religious and secular stereotypes suggests that the quality that stand outs, that identifies one as a saint, is some manifestation of unimpeachable virtue.
More serious, but no lower a bar to clear are the requirements officially put forth by some religious bodies, that a saint is not only one whose life models the love of God but has also performed verifiable miracles, not once, but at least twice.
My criteria is different. I mean, I don’t begrudge all those official saints their hard won status, its just my interest is more in those I call ordinary saints. That is, people whose very way of being in the world makes the world better. And who suffer and celebrate right along with us as we co-author the story of the world with our lives.
And so when I think of the saints I’ve known, I don’t think of people of flawless moral character, or who underwent some radical transformation from a formerly sinful to a new saintly life, I think of people who were profoundly human. By which I mean people who generously offered their uniqueness to others. A uniqueness John Updike describes in our first reading as, “your own brand of magic.” The power and authenticity of which no one can imitate once we’re gone.
I’m thinking now of someone’s smile, broad and beautiful, and uniquely theirs. That smile could do more to brighten my day than a dozen suns in the sky.
A smile won’t get you canonized a saint in any tradition I’m aware of, but its all the evidence I need that this person was an ordinary saint, because I know it was genuine, not planned or forced, but a unique gift freely and generously shared in a world that often gives us much to frown about.
Then there’s my seventh grade gym teacher, Mr. Le Blanc whose unique gift or brand of magic was his compassion manifest in the way he looked out for and checked in with kids targeted by bullies, including me. And this was in the late 70’s/early 80’s when it seemed bullying was a given and generally dismissed as “boys will be boys”. No one sells medals inscribed, “Mr. Le Blanc protest us.” but there’s no doubt in my mind that Mr. Le Blanc was an ordinary saint whose lived uniqueness was nothing less than extraordinary to those among his students who needed to know someone saw and stood with them.
Because their impact is so powerful even when their lives were modest and their actions appeared subtle, the loss of an ordinary saint to death is a blow to the world, especially the smaller world of our personal relationship with them.
I recently learned of the death of a friend with whom I had lost contact after she married, an ordinary saint whose unique brand of magic was her fierce loyalty during the most difficult period of my life, a few years just before I came out. It hurts to know she’s gone.
And when I hung up the phone following a call confirming my mentor had died, I broke down and cried. A woefully and wonderfully human man and ordinary saint, he shared with me his unique capacity to not only listen to me but to help me listen to me. I don’t think I’d be standing in this pulpit this morning absent that gift which he gave away so lavishly but without fanfare. It’s been almost six years now since he died, but the pain that accompanied his death sits much closer to me.
A popular idiom attributed to the ancient Roman poet Terrance asserts, “Time heals all wounds.” I’ve long had my doubts about whether or not this is true, so much so that to my knowledge I have never spoken or written those words to anyone in mourning. Not least of all because when faced with loss brought on by death, more than healing we crave solace.
Solace, as typically defined, simply refers to comfort in sorrow. This understanding or definition suggests solace is located in a place, another person, or even objects that soothe us.
Conceived as such solace is taken as something that already exists and just waiting for us…waiting to be discovered, waiting to be utilized when life has been upended and we feel set adrift. And so it’s not an uncommon question to ask others and even ourselves when someone has died, “Where do you find solace?”
Ah, but then along comes David Whyte in our second reading this morning with a different take on solace. “Solace”, he writes, “is the art of asking the beautiful question, of ourselves, of our world or of one another, in fiercely difficult and un-beautiful moments.”
In describing solace as an art, Whyte points not to person, place or thing, but process. Not a ready-made, soothed state awaiting our arrival, but an active response we initiate in the midst of sorrow. And as an art, solace is a creative rather than formulaic process, a “beautiful, imaginative home we make where disappointment can go to be rehabilitated.”, says Whyte.
Indeed, it is a home constructed of questions felt and lived more than thought through and answered. For questions are not only the medium and tools of the art of solace, but the product. For, “solace”, Whyte reminds us, “is not meant to be an answer, but an invitation.” An invitation to venture further into the mystery of life and loss rather than solve or explain it. Venture far enough and we will encounter the essential questions, those Whyte calls, “very direct and forceful questions,”
How will you bear the inevitable that is coming to you?
How will you endure it through the years?
How will you shape a life equal to and as beautiful and as astonishing as a world that can birth you, bring you into the light and then just as you are beginning to understand it, take you away?
With these, the “strategic mind”, as Whyte calls it, is rendered speechless, comes up empty and nudges us toward different ways of knowing that have become foreign in our data driven, answer anxious age.… ways of knowing like intuition, feeling, and relationships.
This is why the most memorable eulogies are those that communicate who someone was through stories and experiences shared rather than explanations of their virtues, apologies for their vices, or a list of things they accomplished. Indeed, eulogies are an opportunity to engage in the art of solace.
As is the simple act of remembering.
Whether a few hours or several decades have passed since a loss, remembering carries the potential bring questions we typically avoid to the fore. Questions about life and loss we can’t answer, but only live.
And ironically, it is those ordinary saints we’ve know and who have died who show us how to live the questions. Not by admonishing us to imitate their own brand of magic, but inspiring us to uncover, appreciate, and share ours with equal, generous abandon. May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
November 7, 2021
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Recently my mother-law’s eye glasses were lost. It’s the only pair she has and so a frantic search ensued. My husband, her grandchildren, and several staff members of the nursing home where she lives all joined in to search high and low but alas could not find them. Then, a few days after they went missing and the search had been exhausted a text message came from the social worker at the nursing home. “I prayed to St. Anthony. We found the glasses.”
Based on her text, I would not be surprised to learn the social worker also has a St. Christopher medal hanging from the rearview mirror of her car. Perhaps you’ve heard or even utter yourself the petition, “Saint Christopher protect us.”
While some find the very idea of saints, let alone the petitioning of them for help in finding lost objects or protecting us against danger, silly, others, like the social worker at my mother-in-law’s nursing home, take them quite seriously. And even if you don’t have an opinion either way or don’t otherwise concern yourself with them, saints are all around us.
Their names adorn churches in every town, and a fair number of streets too. Indeed some towns are themselves named after saints, islands and mountains too. And hospitals….plenty of hospitals bear their names as do clinics, and schools, and cemeteries. Statues of them adorn buildings and gardens both public and private, sacred and secular. Most bookstores will have a title or two if not more devoted to one or many. And museums are full of them in just about every medium and from multiple ages of human history. Indeed they’re kind of hard to avoid.
We even reference them in popular speech…describing an especially good, but often beleaguered person, as “sainted” or as having, “the patience of a saint.” Phrases that suggest we know one when we see one, even if our tradition or personal beliefs don’t otherwise recognize them in some formal or official manner.
And when we do see one what we may very well “see” or are responding to is some quality that makes them stand out in the crowd, so to speak. This is true of official as well as unofficial saints. Now, popular religious and secular stereotypes suggests that the quality that stand outs, that identifies one as a saint, is some manifestation of unimpeachable virtue.
More serious, but no lower a bar to clear are the requirements officially put forth by some religious bodies, that a saint is not only one whose life models the love of God but has also performed verifiable miracles, not once, but at least twice.
My criteria is different. I mean, I don’t begrudge all those official saints their hard won status, its just my interest is more in those I call ordinary saints. That is, people whose very way of being in the world makes the world better. And who suffer and celebrate right along with us as we co-author the story of the world with our lives.
And so when I think of the saints I’ve known, I don’t think of people of flawless moral character, or who underwent some radical transformation from a formerly sinful to a new saintly life, I think of people who were profoundly human. By which I mean people who generously offered their uniqueness to others. A uniqueness John Updike describes in our first reading as, “your own brand of magic.” The power and authenticity of which no one can imitate once we’re gone.
I’m thinking now of someone’s smile, broad and beautiful, and uniquely theirs. That smile could do more to brighten my day than a dozen suns in the sky.
A smile won’t get you canonized a saint in any tradition I’m aware of, but its all the evidence I need that this person was an ordinary saint, because I know it was genuine, not planned or forced, but a unique gift freely and generously shared in a world that often gives us much to frown about.
Then there’s my seventh grade gym teacher, Mr. Le Blanc whose unique gift or brand of magic was his compassion manifest in the way he looked out for and checked in with kids targeted by bullies, including me. And this was in the late 70’s/early 80’s when it seemed bullying was a given and generally dismissed as “boys will be boys”. No one sells medals inscribed, “Mr. Le Blanc protest us.” but there’s no doubt in my mind that Mr. Le Blanc was an ordinary saint whose lived uniqueness was nothing less than extraordinary to those among his students who needed to know someone saw and stood with them.
Because their impact is so powerful even when their lives were modest and their actions appeared subtle, the loss of an ordinary saint to death is a blow to the world, especially the smaller world of our personal relationship with them.
I recently learned of the death of a friend with whom I had lost contact after she married, an ordinary saint whose unique brand of magic was her fierce loyalty during the most difficult period of my life, a few years just before I came out. It hurts to know she’s gone.
And when I hung up the phone following a call confirming my mentor had died, I broke down and cried. A woefully and wonderfully human man and ordinary saint, he shared with me his unique capacity to not only listen to me but to help me listen to me. I don’t think I’d be standing in this pulpit this morning absent that gift which he gave away so lavishly but without fanfare. It’s been almost six years now since he died, but the pain that accompanied his death sits much closer to me.
A popular idiom attributed to the ancient Roman poet Terrance asserts, “Time heals all wounds.” I’ve long had my doubts about whether or not this is true, so much so that to my knowledge I have never spoken or written those words to anyone in mourning. Not least of all because when faced with loss brought on by death, more than healing we crave solace.
Solace, as typically defined, simply refers to comfort in sorrow. This understanding or definition suggests solace is located in a place, another person, or even objects that soothe us.
Conceived as such solace is taken as something that already exists and just waiting for us…waiting to be discovered, waiting to be utilized when life has been upended and we feel set adrift. And so it’s not an uncommon question to ask others and even ourselves when someone has died, “Where do you find solace?”
Ah, but then along comes David Whyte in our second reading this morning with a different take on solace. “Solace”, he writes, “is the art of asking the beautiful question, of ourselves, of our world or of one another, in fiercely difficult and un-beautiful moments.”
In describing solace as an art, Whyte points not to person, place or thing, but process. Not a ready-made, soothed state awaiting our arrival, but an active response we initiate in the midst of sorrow. And as an art, solace is a creative rather than formulaic process, a “beautiful, imaginative home we make where disappointment can go to be rehabilitated.”, says Whyte.
Indeed, it is a home constructed of questions felt and lived more than thought through and answered. For questions are not only the medium and tools of the art of solace, but the product. For, “solace”, Whyte reminds us, “is not meant to be an answer, but an invitation.” An invitation to venture further into the mystery of life and loss rather than solve or explain it. Venture far enough and we will encounter the essential questions, those Whyte calls, “very direct and forceful questions,”
How will you bear the inevitable that is coming to you?
How will you endure it through the years?
How will you shape a life equal to and as beautiful and as astonishing as a world that can birth you, bring you into the light and then just as you are beginning to understand it, take you away?
With these, the “strategic mind”, as Whyte calls it, is rendered speechless, comes up empty and nudges us toward different ways of knowing that have become foreign in our data driven, answer anxious age.… ways of knowing like intuition, feeling, and relationships.
This is why the most memorable eulogies are those that communicate who someone was through stories and experiences shared rather than explanations of their virtues, apologies for their vices, or a list of things they accomplished. Indeed, eulogies are an opportunity to engage in the art of solace.
As is the simple act of remembering.
Whether a few hours or several decades have passed since a loss, remembering carries the potential bring questions we typically avoid to the fore. Questions about life and loss we can’t answer, but only live.
And ironically, it is those ordinary saints we’ve know and who have died who show us how to live the questions. Not by admonishing us to imitate their own brand of magic, but inspiring us to uncover, appreciate, and share ours with equal, generous abandon. May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be