Where Our Future Can Begin
Sermon Given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
September 8, 2013
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
The other day I passed a school bus on my way home and it started me thinking about riding the school bus when I was a kid. Before my family moved to the rural town with expansive, rolling farmlands and dense woods where my parents still live in, we lived in what might be considered a small city outside of Hartford where the largest plots of land were reserved for retail or commercial space and public buildings, thus my bus route to school took me past things like the town library and strip malls, gas stations, and warehouses as well as apartment complexes and private homes.
With rare exception, the buildings were dull, lifeless, and some, downright ugly. I remember gazing out the window, bouncing up and down in my seat as the bus rolled over railroad tracks and potholes and thinking about how someday I was going to become an architect and fill the world with attractive buildings. It was my dream to help create a more beautiful world, a dream that never left me even as the likelihood of me becoming an architect diminished thanks to...well let’s call it a difficult relationship with calculus; we just didn’t get along.
Of course, every child dreams. Some dreams come and go, many perhaps, are never realized. But some dreams stay with us even if they’re not realized the way we imagined. Dreams that stay with us, that survive the innocence and naivete of youth, like my own dream to help create a more beautiful world, might be more accurately called a longing.
When we feel or experience a sense of longing we are acknowledging that something is amiss... in our lives or the world around us. We long when we’re aware we’re not quite where we want or need to be. Indeed, longing is marked by a profound sense that there is more to life than what passes for life in images on our screens, in the pages of magazines, and store windows.
The contemporary philosopher Jacob Needleman reminds us, “Human beings are meant to do more than simply live out their physical lives on this earth.” To long then is to experience an essential hunger, hunger for a life that matters....a life that has depth....that is multi-dimensional... a life in which, as the song goes, “my heart in tune be found.” To pursue our longing is to embark on the journey of a lifetime...our spiritual journey.
Each of us here today carries within us a longing...a longing for a world that looks...no...that IS... different from the one we know today. In short, we are a hungry people.
Now, there are many, many people who feel the same longing, same sense of awe, wonder, frustration, excitement, fear, and hope about life, the world we live in, and our place in it all as you and I do. But, for varied reasons, they do not gather with others...they try to go it alone. Its not really that surprising given the strong do-it-yourself, ultra-competitive current that runs through the American psyche.
Some claim it is impossible to travel a spiritual journey alone. I don’t know that it is impossible, but I imagine it is more difficult, for the spiritual journey is really about self-transformation. Self-transformation is at the heart of the teachings and practices of the Buddha, Jesus, The prophet Mohamed, Moses...and countless other spiritual teachers. The great paradox is that self-transformation happens best in relationship with others, that is, in community. So while our longing for a better world or deeper life may spark our spiritual seeking, it is the process of building that better world with others and learning to live in covenant with one another that actually feeds and helps sustain our transformation.
We are a hungry people.
And because we are a hungry people, we gather together to feed one another and be fed.
Because peace is too often pursued through war, we gather together to cultivate peace within and among us.
Because courage is the exception and fear the norm around the globe, we gather together to speak truth to power.
Because the good we see and do sustains us, we gather together, to remain strong.
Because only love can disarm evil, we gather together, to learn to love.
Because our hearts at times grow heavy, we gather together to comfort one another.
Because we are sometimes weak and mess up, we gather together forgive one another.
Because there is suffering, we gather together, to practice kindness and work for justice.
Because we are part of a greater whole, we gather together, to promote good stewardship and right relations.
Because we are a hungry people, we gather, here...to be transformed.
In our gathering together we join with those, who, in the words of Adrienne Rich, “...age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.”
When we gather together, we create a community; a community to support, encourage, and provide a place to act and reflect, celebrate and mourn.
Both the people that form and the place that houses a faith community provide refuge and inspiration for the spiritual traveler.
This is why Robert Walsh speaks of gathering as an act of this season, for the here and now...a community of and for this particular time in history and at the same time Kenneth Patton reminds us to “build temples” that our gathering today may be known to future generations who will “put their carvings beside ours and light candles where long ago ours burned away.” and yet shall there remain “a lingering of our questions and solicitations” and “the rafters and pillars will remember our dreams.”
In her book, Traveling Mercies, novelist Anne Lamott explains why she bring her son Sam to church, “The main reason [I make him go] is that I want to give him what I found…, which is to say, a path and a little light to see by. Most of the people I know who have what I want, which is to say, purpose, heart, balance, gratitude, joy, are people with a deep sense of spirituality. They are people in community who pray or practice their faith, they are Buddhists, Jews, Christians, people banding together to work on themselves and for human rights. They follow a brighter light than the glimmer of their own candle, they are part of something beautiful.”
Lamott’s words express what she knows on deeply personal level... that communities of faith and the places they meet, being rooted in past, active in the present, yet mindful of the future, offer something not easily found elsewhere in our daily lives. While Lamott describes this something as an opportunity to transcend the narrow confines of the ego-self, Robert Walsh and Kenneth Patton describe church, both the gathering of people and physical space, as providing a dimension of timelessness to our finite lives. I agree communities of faith and the space in which they meet are places to experience timelessness and self-transcendence, but they are also, and perhaps most importantly, I think, places, in the words of the hymn we’ll soon sing “where our future,” that is, of lives transformed, “can begin.” For it is within communities of faith and the church, mosque, synagogue, temple or meeting house it calls home that people have gathered for centuries to commit themselves to the journey of a lifetime...the spiritual journey.
And so we gather together today...a day filled with hope and promise for the coming year. We gather, each of us, from the youngest among us to the oldest, as heirs to all that has come before us and stewards of what will be long after we’re gone. We gather here, in this building of stone, and wood, and colored glass, tended and cared for with sweat and tears, a house of hope and light brimming with charm and challenges. Here we gather together and bear witness to the dreams of the past as we also engage our present. We gather a hungry and hopeful people... and in so doing we are transformed into a community of faith, a people and a place, where our future can begin.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon Given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
September 8, 2013
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
The other day I passed a school bus on my way home and it started me thinking about riding the school bus when I was a kid. Before my family moved to the rural town with expansive, rolling farmlands and dense woods where my parents still live in, we lived in what might be considered a small city outside of Hartford where the largest plots of land were reserved for retail or commercial space and public buildings, thus my bus route to school took me past things like the town library and strip malls, gas stations, and warehouses as well as apartment complexes and private homes.
With rare exception, the buildings were dull, lifeless, and some, downright ugly. I remember gazing out the window, bouncing up and down in my seat as the bus rolled over railroad tracks and potholes and thinking about how someday I was going to become an architect and fill the world with attractive buildings. It was my dream to help create a more beautiful world, a dream that never left me even as the likelihood of me becoming an architect diminished thanks to...well let’s call it a difficult relationship with calculus; we just didn’t get along.
Of course, every child dreams. Some dreams come and go, many perhaps, are never realized. But some dreams stay with us even if they’re not realized the way we imagined. Dreams that stay with us, that survive the innocence and naivete of youth, like my own dream to help create a more beautiful world, might be more accurately called a longing.
When we feel or experience a sense of longing we are acknowledging that something is amiss... in our lives or the world around us. We long when we’re aware we’re not quite where we want or need to be. Indeed, longing is marked by a profound sense that there is more to life than what passes for life in images on our screens, in the pages of magazines, and store windows.
The contemporary philosopher Jacob Needleman reminds us, “Human beings are meant to do more than simply live out their physical lives on this earth.” To long then is to experience an essential hunger, hunger for a life that matters....a life that has depth....that is multi-dimensional... a life in which, as the song goes, “my heart in tune be found.” To pursue our longing is to embark on the journey of a lifetime...our spiritual journey.
Each of us here today carries within us a longing...a longing for a world that looks...no...that IS... different from the one we know today. In short, we are a hungry people.
Now, there are many, many people who feel the same longing, same sense of awe, wonder, frustration, excitement, fear, and hope about life, the world we live in, and our place in it all as you and I do. But, for varied reasons, they do not gather with others...they try to go it alone. Its not really that surprising given the strong do-it-yourself, ultra-competitive current that runs through the American psyche.
Some claim it is impossible to travel a spiritual journey alone. I don’t know that it is impossible, but I imagine it is more difficult, for the spiritual journey is really about self-transformation. Self-transformation is at the heart of the teachings and practices of the Buddha, Jesus, The prophet Mohamed, Moses...and countless other spiritual teachers. The great paradox is that self-transformation happens best in relationship with others, that is, in community. So while our longing for a better world or deeper life may spark our spiritual seeking, it is the process of building that better world with others and learning to live in covenant with one another that actually feeds and helps sustain our transformation.
We are a hungry people.
And because we are a hungry people, we gather together to feed one another and be fed.
Because peace is too often pursued through war, we gather together to cultivate peace within and among us.
Because courage is the exception and fear the norm around the globe, we gather together to speak truth to power.
Because the good we see and do sustains us, we gather together, to remain strong.
Because only love can disarm evil, we gather together, to learn to love.
Because our hearts at times grow heavy, we gather together to comfort one another.
Because we are sometimes weak and mess up, we gather together forgive one another.
Because there is suffering, we gather together, to practice kindness and work for justice.
Because we are part of a greater whole, we gather together, to promote good stewardship and right relations.
Because we are a hungry people, we gather, here...to be transformed.
In our gathering together we join with those, who, in the words of Adrienne Rich, “...age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.”
When we gather together, we create a community; a community to support, encourage, and provide a place to act and reflect, celebrate and mourn.
Both the people that form and the place that houses a faith community provide refuge and inspiration for the spiritual traveler.
This is why Robert Walsh speaks of gathering as an act of this season, for the here and now...a community of and for this particular time in history and at the same time Kenneth Patton reminds us to “build temples” that our gathering today may be known to future generations who will “put their carvings beside ours and light candles where long ago ours burned away.” and yet shall there remain “a lingering of our questions and solicitations” and “the rafters and pillars will remember our dreams.”
In her book, Traveling Mercies, novelist Anne Lamott explains why she bring her son Sam to church, “The main reason [I make him go] is that I want to give him what I found…, which is to say, a path and a little light to see by. Most of the people I know who have what I want, which is to say, purpose, heart, balance, gratitude, joy, are people with a deep sense of spirituality. They are people in community who pray or practice their faith, they are Buddhists, Jews, Christians, people banding together to work on themselves and for human rights. They follow a brighter light than the glimmer of their own candle, they are part of something beautiful.”
Lamott’s words express what she knows on deeply personal level... that communities of faith and the places they meet, being rooted in past, active in the present, yet mindful of the future, offer something not easily found elsewhere in our daily lives. While Lamott describes this something as an opportunity to transcend the narrow confines of the ego-self, Robert Walsh and Kenneth Patton describe church, both the gathering of people and physical space, as providing a dimension of timelessness to our finite lives. I agree communities of faith and the space in which they meet are places to experience timelessness and self-transcendence, but they are also, and perhaps most importantly, I think, places, in the words of the hymn we’ll soon sing “where our future,” that is, of lives transformed, “can begin.” For it is within communities of faith and the church, mosque, synagogue, temple or meeting house it calls home that people have gathered for centuries to commit themselves to the journey of a lifetime...the spiritual journey.
And so we gather together today...a day filled with hope and promise for the coming year. We gather, each of us, from the youngest among us to the oldest, as heirs to all that has come before us and stewards of what will be long after we’re gone. We gather here, in this building of stone, and wood, and colored glass, tended and cared for with sweat and tears, a house of hope and light brimming with charm and challenges. Here we gather together and bear witness to the dreams of the past as we also engage our present. We gather a hungry and hopeful people... and in so doing we are transformed into a community of faith, a people and a place, where our future can begin.
Amen and Blessed Be
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