Generosity
Preached 2/16/2020 at SouthWest UU in N. Royalton OH
By Rev. Meg Mathieson
We are on a journey together, you and I, all of us. Spiritual beings on a human journey, and we have chosen to spend an hour of it here, together, in worship.
Since ancient times, humans have gathered together to support each other and to find support on this journey. We look to each other and to the sky to find meaning, to discover why there is so much pain, why so much heart breaking change.
We have journeyed together, in different formations of atoms, perhaps in different lifetimes, and our ancestors looked at the stars and made up stories of meaning. Stories to explain pain and suffering, stories to give us strength. The seasons move and cycle, and we often find that when we align ourselves when we surrender to the changing of the seasons, the changing of life, we are invigorated, nourished, and enlivened.
Nature reaches out to us, offers blessing to soothe us, and we so often neglect to stop and just listen. Those blessings are out there, in the earth, among the stars, whispered by our ancestors and all those who have crossed to the other side of the veil, encouraging us in this journey.
Our ancestors told stories of great journeys, from the Israelites wandering in the desert for forty years to the Inuit and Aborigine tales of trekking to their remote homelands. Some of it was literal, a great deal of it was metaphorical, reflecting the way that we humans have always been journeying together.
Today we are on a journey of blessings. From the unison affirmation at the beginning of this service, we have been generously laying blessings upon each other. Blessing one another and encouraging one another in this journey of blessings.
A great generosity, a great gift that we can give is to listen. To listen to voices that do not typically lead the journey. The voices other than Moses, the leader of the group. What about that little child in the middle of the caravan? What is she saying? What wisdom might we miss if we only listen to the traditional leaders of the journey?
Our journey of blessings today takes us through a collection of Jan Richardson poems, Jan Richardson is an ordained United Methodist minister, and if anyone understands the hardships and pain of changes and journeys right now, it would be our siblings in the Methodist church.
Rev Jan, in this series of poems, invokes the Mosaic wanderings as a metaphor for the times of desert wandering that we all endure in our lives. She writes, Beloved is where we begin.
If you would enter
into the wilderness,
do not begin
without a blessing.
Do not leave
without hearing
who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One
who has traveled this path
before you.
Do not go
without letting it echo
in your ears,
and if you find
it is hard
to let it into your heart,
do not despair.
That is what
this journey is for.
I cannot promise
this blessing will free you
from danger,
from fear,
from hunger
or thirst,
from the scorching
of sun
or the fall
of the night.
But I can tell you
that on this path
there will be help.
I can tell you
that on this way
there will be rest.
I can tell you
that you will know
the strange graces
that come to our aid
only on a road
such as this,
that fly to meet us
bearing comfort
and strength,
that come alongside us
for no other cause
than to lean themselves
toward our ear
and with their
curious insistence
whisper our name:
Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.
Your name, your true, deep, ancient name has always been Beloved. Like Toni Morrison’s character dearly Beloved, named after a beautiful word that her mother saw on a tombstone, we are marked for death at the moment of our birth. That knowledge is sometimes terrifying. As creatures aware of the inevitability of our own demise, we appear to be unique.
On the other hand, while humans have a fantastic capacity for existential crises, we also appear to be unique among living things as creatures who regularly ignore and forgeth that we are also inextricably joined with every other living thing on earth in a mysterious web of interdependence.
But what of our pain?
Rumi said that the wound is the place where the light enters you, and Rev Jan Richardson echoes that sentiment in this next poem: Rend Your Heart.
To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.
Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.
It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.
And so let this be
a season for wandering,
for trusting the breaking,
for tracing the rupture
that will return you
to the One who waits,
who watches,
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.
That flash of wing is what we left behind when we chose human bodies. When we chose to be here together. We are not powerless on this journey - not at all, not even a little bit. Pain comes and is strengthens us by letting the light in. The glory, the holiness, the you that is unique and beautiful is formed by that light.
And so we return. We return again and again to this holy space, which we make holy by our presence. Our connection to all living things is disturbed when a life that we love and call part of our body goes somewhere we cannot follow. And yet.
And yet we persist.
And yet we grow stronger.
On our journey together we grow ever stronger, and I offer you the next blessing on our journey: Return.
Remember.
You were built for this
The ancient path
inscribed upon your bones
the insistent pattern
echoing in your heartbeat.
Let this be the season
you turn your face
toward the One
who calls you:
Return, Return.
Let this be the day
you open wide your arms
to the wind that knows
how to bear you
home.
You are blessed. You deserve these blessings, you holy thing.
Some of us struggle quietly in the eaves, invisible illnesses looming in our bones or our brains. I have struggled with depression my entire life, and the women in my family have dutifully handed down that lovely two-headed dragon of anxiety and depression through the ages. I knew my great-grandmother in her old age was grey and fading, not just physically, but the disconnection of depression wore her out first, then my grandmother. My mother is a mighty fighter, but alas both I and my daughter inherited this curse. Depression is not sadness - it is disconnection. It makes you sad, but that is not the illness itself. It’s like saying that the flu is not a fever. The flu gives you a fever, but the flu is something in and of itself.
My mother has fibromyalgia, my wife has her own silent struggles and on and on, all of us here on this journey together, I may not see you stumble, I may not be able to tell that you are carrying a great burden, but it is there all the same. And so we do what we can do: we build each other up. We support and love and help. And when you cannot walk, I will sit down beside you and wait with you.
And the gift you give is listening. Deep listening without offering advice. This is the holy thing that you give. This is the way that you carried me when I could not walk. This is the way that we hold one another in holy light.
There is an ancient story found in many cultures about a bowl of soup. It goes like this: God showed a man two doors. Inside the first one, in the middle of the room, was a large round table with a large pot of vegetable stew. It smelled delicious and made the man’s mouth water, but the people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.
The man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. God said, “You have seen Hell.”
Behind the second door, the room appeared exactly the same. There was the large round table with the large pot of wonderful vegetable stew that made the man’s mouth water. The people had the same long-handled spoons, but they were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking.
The man said, “I don’t understand.”
God smiled. It is simple, she said, Love only requires one skill. These people learned early on to share and feed one another. While the greedy only think of themselves…
You are strong. Even when you do not feel strong. You are strong because we are strong. Ubuntu. You are who you are because of who we are. You are strong even when you do not feel strong because you are connected, even when you do not feel connected. You are holy and a being of pure light.
And now we have come to the end of this little journey of blessings, with your last blessing for now: Blessed are you who bear the light.
Blessed are you
who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify
to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness
to its persistence
when everything seems
in shadow
and grief.
Blessed are you
in whom
the light lives,
in whom
the brightness blazes--
your heart
a chapel,
an altar where
in the deepest night
can be seen
the fire that
shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith,
in stubborn hope,
in love that illumines
every broken thing
it finds.
In illuminating every single broken thing, you share your holiness with the world. I hope that these four blessings will bear you out into the cold world. Hold onto the knowledge of your holiness and your strength until you find your way back here again.
And when you come back, we will continue to journey together. And our journey will have the joy of a dance.
Preached 2/16/2020 at SouthWest UU in N. Royalton OH
By Rev. Meg Mathieson
We are on a journey together, you and I, all of us. Spiritual beings on a human journey, and we have chosen to spend an hour of it here, together, in worship.
Since ancient times, humans have gathered together to support each other and to find support on this journey. We look to each other and to the sky to find meaning, to discover why there is so much pain, why so much heart breaking change.
We have journeyed together, in different formations of atoms, perhaps in different lifetimes, and our ancestors looked at the stars and made up stories of meaning. Stories to explain pain and suffering, stories to give us strength. The seasons move and cycle, and we often find that when we align ourselves when we surrender to the changing of the seasons, the changing of life, we are invigorated, nourished, and enlivened.
Nature reaches out to us, offers blessing to soothe us, and we so often neglect to stop and just listen. Those blessings are out there, in the earth, among the stars, whispered by our ancestors and all those who have crossed to the other side of the veil, encouraging us in this journey.
Our ancestors told stories of great journeys, from the Israelites wandering in the desert for forty years to the Inuit and Aborigine tales of trekking to their remote homelands. Some of it was literal, a great deal of it was metaphorical, reflecting the way that we humans have always been journeying together.
Today we are on a journey of blessings. From the unison affirmation at the beginning of this service, we have been generously laying blessings upon each other. Blessing one another and encouraging one another in this journey of blessings.
A great generosity, a great gift that we can give is to listen. To listen to voices that do not typically lead the journey. The voices other than Moses, the leader of the group. What about that little child in the middle of the caravan? What is she saying? What wisdom might we miss if we only listen to the traditional leaders of the journey?
Our journey of blessings today takes us through a collection of Jan Richardson poems, Jan Richardson is an ordained United Methodist minister, and if anyone understands the hardships and pain of changes and journeys right now, it would be our siblings in the Methodist church.
Rev Jan, in this series of poems, invokes the Mosaic wanderings as a metaphor for the times of desert wandering that we all endure in our lives. She writes, Beloved is where we begin.
If you would enter
into the wilderness,
do not begin
without a blessing.
Do not leave
without hearing
who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One
who has traveled this path
before you.
Do not go
without letting it echo
in your ears,
and if you find
it is hard
to let it into your heart,
do not despair.
That is what
this journey is for.
I cannot promise
this blessing will free you
from danger,
from fear,
from hunger
or thirst,
from the scorching
of sun
or the fall
of the night.
But I can tell you
that on this path
there will be help.
I can tell you
that on this way
there will be rest.
I can tell you
that you will know
the strange graces
that come to our aid
only on a road
such as this,
that fly to meet us
bearing comfort
and strength,
that come alongside us
for no other cause
than to lean themselves
toward our ear
and with their
curious insistence
whisper our name:
Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.
Your name, your true, deep, ancient name has always been Beloved. Like Toni Morrison’s character dearly Beloved, named after a beautiful word that her mother saw on a tombstone, we are marked for death at the moment of our birth. That knowledge is sometimes terrifying. As creatures aware of the inevitability of our own demise, we appear to be unique.
On the other hand, while humans have a fantastic capacity for existential crises, we also appear to be unique among living things as creatures who regularly ignore and forgeth that we are also inextricably joined with every other living thing on earth in a mysterious web of interdependence.
But what of our pain?
Rumi said that the wound is the place where the light enters you, and Rev Jan Richardson echoes that sentiment in this next poem: Rend Your Heart.
To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.
Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.
It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.
And so let this be
a season for wandering,
for trusting the breaking,
for tracing the rupture
that will return you
to the One who waits,
who watches,
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.
That flash of wing is what we left behind when we chose human bodies. When we chose to be here together. We are not powerless on this journey - not at all, not even a little bit. Pain comes and is strengthens us by letting the light in. The glory, the holiness, the you that is unique and beautiful is formed by that light.
And so we return. We return again and again to this holy space, which we make holy by our presence. Our connection to all living things is disturbed when a life that we love and call part of our body goes somewhere we cannot follow. And yet.
And yet we persist.
And yet we grow stronger.
On our journey together we grow ever stronger, and I offer you the next blessing on our journey: Return.
Remember.
You were built for this
The ancient path
inscribed upon your bones
the insistent pattern
echoing in your heartbeat.
Let this be the season
you turn your face
toward the One
who calls you:
Return, Return.
Let this be the day
you open wide your arms
to the wind that knows
how to bear you
home.
You are blessed. You deserve these blessings, you holy thing.
Some of us struggle quietly in the eaves, invisible illnesses looming in our bones or our brains. I have struggled with depression my entire life, and the women in my family have dutifully handed down that lovely two-headed dragon of anxiety and depression through the ages. I knew my great-grandmother in her old age was grey and fading, not just physically, but the disconnection of depression wore her out first, then my grandmother. My mother is a mighty fighter, but alas both I and my daughter inherited this curse. Depression is not sadness - it is disconnection. It makes you sad, but that is not the illness itself. It’s like saying that the flu is not a fever. The flu gives you a fever, but the flu is something in and of itself.
My mother has fibromyalgia, my wife has her own silent struggles and on and on, all of us here on this journey together, I may not see you stumble, I may not be able to tell that you are carrying a great burden, but it is there all the same. And so we do what we can do: we build each other up. We support and love and help. And when you cannot walk, I will sit down beside you and wait with you.
And the gift you give is listening. Deep listening without offering advice. This is the holy thing that you give. This is the way that you carried me when I could not walk. This is the way that we hold one another in holy light.
There is an ancient story found in many cultures about a bowl of soup. It goes like this: God showed a man two doors. Inside the first one, in the middle of the room, was a large round table with a large pot of vegetable stew. It smelled delicious and made the man’s mouth water, but the people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.
The man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. God said, “You have seen Hell.”
Behind the second door, the room appeared exactly the same. There was the large round table with the large pot of wonderful vegetable stew that made the man’s mouth water. The people had the same long-handled spoons, but they were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking.
The man said, “I don’t understand.”
God smiled. It is simple, she said, Love only requires one skill. These people learned early on to share and feed one another. While the greedy only think of themselves…
You are strong. Even when you do not feel strong. You are strong because we are strong. Ubuntu. You are who you are because of who we are. You are strong even when you do not feel strong because you are connected, even when you do not feel connected. You are holy and a being of pure light.
And now we have come to the end of this little journey of blessings, with your last blessing for now: Blessed are you who bear the light.
Blessed are you
who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify
to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness
to its persistence
when everything seems
in shadow
and grief.
Blessed are you
in whom
the light lives,
in whom
the brightness blazes--
your heart
a chapel,
an altar where
in the deepest night
can be seen
the fire that
shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith,
in stubborn hope,
in love that illumines
every broken thing
it finds.
In illuminating every single broken thing, you share your holiness with the world. I hope that these four blessings will bear you out into the cold world. Hold onto the knowledge of your holiness and your strength until you find your way back here again.
And when you come back, we will continue to journey together. And our journey will have the joy of a dance.