Archived Sermons

Introductory Words

There we were sitting in our usual circle of chairs. "We" were a group of Unitarian Universalist seminarians enrolled in a class on theology—a Unitarian Universalist class on theology led by the enigmatic Bob Kimball. Throughout the semester we focused on the writings of Paul Tillich, Martin Buber, and Albert Camus. Many of us didn't always understand what we read, but still we mustered what intellectual resources we had and talked of such things as "depth", “I and thou relationships”, and “meaning in a meaningless world”. Some of us were better at these mental acrobatics than others, some were more familiar with the language, but all of us were straining our brains in an attempt to break into the lofty truth that we believed was to be found in the writings of these theologians and philosophers.

Then one day, Barb Bush in response to a question on meaning told of her journey to class that day. She didn't use any of the intellectual concepts we had been tossing around within the group, she didn’t refer to any of the great philosophical minds, but instead spoke of noticing the sky, the green grass, the flowers, and how wonderful it was to acknowledge the people she encountered. She said that she greeted the trees with, "Hello trees!" "It was a most extraordinary morning", she said, and then she sat back in her chair and said no more.

Well, you can imagine our looks of amazement. Here in this class where we have been pondering these great and lofty ideas, here we have been reading the woerk of some of the greatest minds of the 20th century , and here out of the blue someone brings in a little travel narrative that includes talking to trees. To say the least we were dumbfounded, and a bit embarrassed for Barbara. "Come on Barbara," we thought to ourselves, "we are talking about Tillich, and meaning and theology—lofty stuff which one isn't even supposed to understand readily—and you add "hello trees"?

Now we knew Barb Bush could run with the best of them when it came to understanding the maze of words people call philosophy and theology. In her previous life she was an English teacher and she knew her stuff. And yet she offered us what seemed to be "happy face theology" or "pretty poster philosophy"—all of which we were smugly above. But even as we knowingly looked at each other, in truth there was an uneasiness in our smuggness. There was an uneasiness because we wondered if she actually “got it” while we groped in the fog—uneasy because perhaps she knew something that we didn't.

Sermon

A common image of the clergy is that they tend to rather sober, starched-collared people, who take very seriously sin and salvation--a dour Puritan type. Their lives are devoted to cleansing the souls of their parishioners, as well as keeping temptation from their own. In their minds this is not a matter to be taken lightly, but one to be pursued with diligence if the world is to be a better place. It takes plenty of hard work and study to reach salvation. This is serious stuff.

This is one of the images I carry of clergy, but it has never been my image of myself, that is, until I really looked at what I was doing. What I noticed was that I was very much the Puritan preacher in an updated sort of way. Now you might not see the similarities right off, but the truth is that I too am very concerned about salvation. I don’t define or describe it in traditional Christian terms, instead for me salvation has to do with wholeness and living a full life. My concept of salvation might be different, but not the focus. I am concerned about salvation--I am concerned that we continue to diligently pursue fulfilling our humanity. I want us to struggle with our sins and fear that keeps us from our holy existence. I see this struggle everywhere, and seldom do I not feel the burden of understanding what is righteous in a particular situation. As my advisor said in seminary, "You are very serious aren't you?" I said "yes" with some pride—but I was missing his point.

What I am gradually seeing, though, is that in my struggle towards such lofty ideals like wholeness I am missing something—I am missing that thing characterized by Barbara’s “Hello tree. Hello flowers”. I have been failing to see that in my “serious” search for a “better life” that I am racing past the heart of it.

From that very class on theology, one of the plays we read was called "The Misunderstanding" by Albert Camus. In this play one of the characters says to her spouse. "You do not know how to really live, for nothing you have really satisfies you. You are always dreaming dreams, building up new duties, going to new countries and new homes. Some of us are different. We know that life is short and one must make haste to love, to share the same bed, embrace the person one loves, and dread every separation. When one loves one has no time for dreams. That is why your life is so cruel, so heart rendering, for you can't prevent yourself from leaving what you value most."

Now I still believe that we need to struggle in life—I believe that it takes a lot of hard work to live our fullness for we have to learn to let go of many of our fears. But what I am trying to increasingly understand is that this is only a part of our existence, and to focus solely on this is to miss so much else. To focus only on the struggles in life, one's duties or dreams, doesn't lead us to the wholeness we seek. We need to take time to smell the roses, to talk to the trees, to love, to celebrate the beauty and joy that can be found around us. We need to experience and embrace the ordinary miracles that fill our world.

Now there are a great many of us who are task oriented--we set our sights on some goal and head towards it. On the way we pass breath-taking scenery, friendly faces, beautiful music, children wanting to play, and splendid sunsets—most of which we don't notice. We rush on towards our goals, and when we think we have succeeded at one, we head off to another. All the time the world we live in and life in general are but backdrops, things we move through on our way somewhere else. We rush onward oblivious to what lies around us. And we may indeed be going places and accomplishing things and that is good to a degree--but too often the lifetime in between is given up in the pursuit.

A metaphor for this might be that of taking a trip. There are some of us who when taking a trip don't like to stop for anything but gas, meals, and the bathroom. When driving across country we focus on the end of the road oblivious to the beautiful spots on the way. In our minds the challenge at hand is getting to the destination, that is the goal, and we will be satisfied only when we get there. And so with this mindset we see each stop along the way as only a delay in accomplishing the task. So we drive past the Grand Canyons, the California Redwood forests, the many splendid natural scenes, because we want what lies at the end of the road. So we put aside smelling the roses so we can get some place because we think life is better at the other end. We spend much of our lives in transition, in pursuit, rather than savoring.

At some point, hopefully not before we come face to face with our death, we realize that we are missing something. We realize that many of the goals we have sought and reached in our lives are not as fulfilling as we imagined. We realize that we are in a treadmill never finding satisfaction, and when we look back on our lives we wonder what we have done. We realize that we have wasted too much of our time.

I tried to own 80 acres of land once. I had dreams, big dreams of making it into a home, personal a refuge for me. I was going to turn part of it into a tree farm, and perhaps live off of that income. So I set about clearing some of the land to plant seedlings which in 7 – 10 years would be my first crop. Clearing the land meant getting rid of 15 - 20 ft tall Scotch pine trees left over from a past plantation. And so I spent my days off cutting down trees with a couple of old chain saws, and when those would break down, I would use a handsaw. After cutting the trees I would then drag them to one of several brush piles I had created on the edge of the envisioned plantation.

At first I had a lot of energy for the task, I could picture the cleared acres, planting the seedlings, the small trees growing, and finally the harvest. As the weeks passed though I felt less joy and enthusiasm. I started seeing the whole project as a war between myself and the hordes of Scotch pine that lay between me and my goal. This beautiful piece of land in the woods of northern Michigan was becoming just another source of struggle and work for me, and the trees (I first sthought so beautiful) my enemies.

Fortunately a miracle occurred one day which change the way I approached the land. It was what I call an ordinary miracle—a miracle very much grounded in our world. It was a bit of grace—a bit of grace in the sense that something from beyond me led me to a better state of mind.

It was around 9:00 in the morning on a clear and crisp late October day. The perfect day for working out-of-doors. It was going to be a day full of a lot of hard work, though, as I was dragging trees I had cut days earlier to the brush pile some 50 yards away. I was in my “let’s get this over with” mode. I set a goal for myself, put my head down and went to work.

But at some point while I was dragging a tree and thinking of all that I had to do, I saw off to the side of my well worn trail some sparkles of intense pure color--incredible dots of red, yellow, green--the colors of the rainbow. I usually block out distractions when I am so working, but the color I saw was so intense and beautiful that I dropped the tree and walked to the tall grass that seemed to be holding these dots of color. As I moved the colors changed or disappeared and reappeared somewhere else. It all felt so magical.

Upon arriving at the grass I saw that it was frost covered, and in the mornings bright sunlight the frost crystals were acting as prisms producing the spots of color. I mean these colors were alive, and they produced inside me a feeling of lightness and joy. I sat in the grass absorbed in the amazing color display before me. For a time I forgot the work, the war with the trees, and I just plain enjoyed myself there in the beautiful outdoors—it was the first time I had done so on the land in quite a while. And when I look back now on those 5 years I tried to own that land, what I first remember is that morning amidst the color. That morning I left my well-worn path towards some future goal, and enjoyed the beauty around me. After that I spent less time working and more time sitting on the hillside watching clouds, and the trees, and the beautiful world around me.

Ordinary miracles—things that we come across in our everyday lives which, if we notice, give meaning and beauty to our existence. They lie all about us (I found one in Northern Michigan, Barb Bush found hers along the streets of Berkeley), and they come to us from the forces that are beyond you and I.

Last Thursday was May 1st—May Day. It passed with little notice as it is not a significant holiday in our culture. And this might be indicative of a problem. I say that because May Day has been traditionally the time when, in part, people celebrate the ordinary miracles of life, a reminder of the incredible gifts all around us that give our lives meaning and beauty. May Day is celebrated in the spring because it is now when life bursts forth after its winter retreat. It is now when life waves itself so dramatically and says, "Look! Look! Take the time to see the miracles around you." May Day was a time set aside each year to help us recognize and celebrate the ordinary miracles of life.

And these ordinary miracles are all around us.

The fact that you are hearing me, that you understand what I say requires millions, if not billions, of chemical reactions in your brain. An ordinary miracle.

The fact that flowers bloom after being froze in the earth for months--this is an ordinary miracle.

That a rainbow can be so incredibly beautiful, or that the DNA in our cells can replicate itself millions of times with so few errors. Ordinary miracles, which if we take the time to notice can bring so much joy, meaning and beauty to our lives.

And so I try to remind myself to stop—stop and smell the roses. Focus less on getting things done, and more with being in this world right now. Dreams and goals are necessary in our lives, but so to is enjoying this very moment surrounded as we are with gifts more complex and amazing then any we can ever imagine in our dreams.

I have a postcard which I bought several years ago as a reminder of all this. On the postcard is drawn several grave stones. The center grave stone marking a fresh grave reads, "Mrs. Bomblatt, she was a devoted laundress". The message in the corner of the card says, "Mrs. Bomblatt suddenly realizes she has spent her entire life cooking and cleaning for other people." And from beneath the fresh mound to soil, comes Mrs. Bomblatt's comment as that realization sinks in. Mrs. Bomblatt says “shit.”

Maybe Tillich, and Martin Buber, and Albert Camus knew this and were trying to tell us in their own ways. Well, if they were I wasn't understanding it all very well—I wasn't understanding that complex theology until Barb said she talked to the trees. And so on this first Sunday in May may we all come to spend a bit more time talking to the trees, watching the clouds roll by, and hugging the ones we love—enjoying the ordinary miracles of this most wonderful earth.

I close with the words of Mairead Maquire, Nobel Prize recipient Community of the Peace People, Ireland.

Take time to listen to the birds,
 the waves,
 the wind.
Take time to breathe in the air,
 the earth,
 the ocean.
Take time to be still,
 to be silent,
 to allow God to fill you up
 with deep peace and love.

Ordinary Miracles
Lyrics by Alan & Marilyn Bergman
Music by Marvin Hamlisch.

Change can come on tiptoe,
Love is where it starts.
It resides,
Often hides
Deep within our hearts.

And just as pebbles make a mountain,
Raindrops make a sea.

One day at a time
Change begins with you and me.

Ordinary miracles
Happen all around
Just by giving and receiving
Comes belonging and believing.

Every sun that rises,
Never rose before.

Each new day
Leads the way
Through a different day.

And we can all be quiet heroes,
Living quiet days.

Walking through the world
Changing it in quiet ways.

Ordinary miracles
Like candles in the dark
Each and every one of us lights a spark.

And the walls can tumble
And the mountains can move
The winds and the tides can turn.

Ordinary miracles,
One for every star.

No lightning bolt or clap of thunder,
Only joy and quiet wonder.

Endless possibilities,
Right before our eyes
See the way a miracle multiplies.

Hope can spring eternally,
Plant it and it grows.

Love is all that's necessary,
Love in it's extraordinary way,
Makes ordinary miracles every blessed day.

©2003 Rev. Daniel S. Brosier