The Courage to Be

A Sermon by Betty Kornitzer

Student Minister

First Parish in Bedford

November 10, 2002

 

I want to speak with you today, not of the courage of Homeric proportions, of battlefield bravery and glory. I want to speak with you about the courage of ordinary people, the courage that you and I need to live our lives.

 

I open with the words of the poet, Mary Oliver:

 

The Journey

 

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
Though the voices around you
Kept shouting
Their bad advice-
Though the whole house
Began to tremble
And you felt the old tug at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
Though the wind pried
With its stiff fingers
At the very foundations,
Though their melancholy
Was terrible.
It was already late
Enough, and a wild night,
And the road full of fallen
Branches and stones.
But little by little,
As you left their voices behind,
The stars began to burn
Through the sheets of clouds,
And there was a new voice
Which you slowly
Recognized as your own,
That kept you company
As you strode deeper and deeper
Into the world,
Determined to do
The only thing you could do-
Determined to save
The only life you could save.

I was inspired to speak with you about courage today by my own experience as student minister right here at First Parish. In thinking about the qualities that would be required for ministry, I must admit that courage never made the top ten list. But oh boy, was I wrong. About 36 hours after John left on his sabbatical last year, (it felt more like 36 minutes to me), I found myself squarely faced with a decision. Things were happening that I thought needed some ministerial input, and wouldn’t you know it, I had a sermon coming up. What to do? Should I play it safe, or address the issue head on? I had some things to say that I imagined might not be too popular. I was pretty nervous. And then, something really amazing happened. I discovered that there was really no decision to make at all. If I had the honor of standing at this pulpit, I had to serve you in the fullest way that I knew how, and that included speaking my mind. And so I did, I couldn’t do it any other way. And, yes, I learned that courage is definitely right up there in the ministry top 10 list.

 

Let us look at Courage. The very word brings to mind dramatic images of heroism and valor. In fact, this is the weekend when we pause to honor our veterans, men and women who have given their lives in the service of their country. These are people who, under siege and in strange lands, found their courage rise to meet the crisis. Catastrophic times give birth to heroes, there’s been far too much of that in the 14 months since September 11th.

 

But this is not a sermon about heroes, at least not the kind that you read about in the headlines, or see on the evening news. For while I am enthralled by such accounts, that’s always about watching something outside of myself, like a newsreel projected on a screen, over there somewhere.

 

With you, my friends, I am interested in talking about soul. About what is happening on the inside, so this is a sermon about you and me, about the very human courage that it takes to live our lives.

 

Mary Oliver writes of our human courage, of something apart from extraordinary bravery, she focuses on the bravery of the ordinary soul. This kind of courage is about taking a stand and making choices, despite all the voices coercing us to just see things their way. It is about coming to that moment of courage, when the stars begin to burn through the sheets of clouds.

 

I am interested in the courageous journey of this being, who, finally, finally, left all the other voices behind, and at last created space for her own spirit to rise from within.

 

It seems to me that this is the purpose of our life’s journey, to find our personal truth, and then to give it voice. It’s about uncovering the authentic light inside, the little light that we sang about with the children this morning. I call this having the courage to live my real true life, and not the life that others prescribe for me. Henry David Thoreau commands that we each “dwell as near as possible to the channel in which our lives flow.” Shakespeare put it this way: “This above all, to thine own self be true.”

 

Looking back at my life, many of my very best decisions have gone completely against the best advice of others. Because, let’s face it, the best advice is only that, advice, and it just can’t hold a candle to an inner conviction, to that little light inside which is the beacon of our essential nature.

 

But it takes courage my friends, it takes courage to say “No” to friends, “No” to family, “No” to colleagues and to release yourself into that channel in which your life flows. But I couldn’t have my real true life until I did just that. Let me tell you, there’s no way that I’d be standing here with you today, finally having the courage to live my real true life, if I had listened to the best advice of others. There’s no way that I would have seen the stars burn through the sheets of clouds, and felt their brilliance pierce my heart.

 

Now I’m not saying that we should ignore the counsel of others, that would be hubris and misguided. In listening to the opinions of others whom we trust we can open our minds and learn. But what I am saying is that in the end we must keep our own counsel, make our own decisions and live by them. We must be true to ourselves.

 

Now, I received some advice about what to do and what not to do with you here this morning. For example, I was strongly advised not to do what I’m going to do right now. I listened to the advice, and I almost followed it, but then, in the car this morning, I decided that I had to be willing to take a risk with you. I had to be willing to speak my truth, knowing that some of you might not like it.

 

So, I am going to light this candle. I light this candle for Sadaam Hussein, for Osama Bin Laden, for Al Queida, for the terrorists who mean to do us harm. I light this candle because it is all too easy for me to forget that we are all connected, we are all one. It is all too easy for me to slip into hate, to put up walls and to separate myself from the “others.” I do not want my heart to go there. And so, I light this candle to remind myself to open my heart and spirit, not to condone acts of terrorism, but not to condemn the individual. I am not making a political statement here, but I am making a religious statement: “Perhaps some of us need to dare to open our spirits in a new and radical way.” I believe that we’ve got to risk it all, or we lose it all.

 

Living our real true lives and speaking in our real true voices is often about taking risks. After all, people may not like who you really are and what you have to say. But what’s the real option here? We can remain silent, and follow the beat of someone else’s drum, living artificial lives of compromised values and half-realized dreams, and constantly swallowing our own voices until we choke on them. I believe that that is what Thoreau meant when he said that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. They close themselves off from their real true lives, and timidly sit in the seeming comfort of the sidelines, out of the line of fire, desperately watching life go by.

 

Now, both of my sons were hockey players; in fact, grown men that they are today, they have still not outgrown the need to strap on all that equipment and play a pick-up game now and then. At least I’m not doing the 6 A.M. carpool any more. But Seriously: One of their hockey heroes was Wayne Gretzky, who made the most of every minute of ice time, working hard and taking risks. Of hockey Wayne noted, “You miss 100% of the shots that you never take.” Gretzky, he never played it safe, he took a lot of shots and he made a lot of goals, and he missed a lot of goals. He didn’t sit on the bench, he played the game. Courage.

 

In Israel today, 500 reserve combat officers have gotten off their bench and engaged in their own risky game of courage. They have made their convictions known by signing a letter refusing to serve in the occupied territories. They state, and I quote: “that occupation continues to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.” Their views are not popular in their homeland, and many of their families have begged them to retract their statements. Often met with repudiation in their homes, these officers have found their own voices, and are living by the courage of their convictions.

 

Now let us look together at the courage that it takes for you and me, ordinary people, just to keep on keeping on in this often troubled and troubling world. The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote: “There are times when even to live is an act of bravery.” Often it seems like the sheets of clouds are closing in around us and there’s not a single beam of starlight to be found. None of us get through life without knowing these times, we are all connected by our vulnerability to the darkness.

 

And there are those among us who have been dealt a particularly challenging hand in life, where does their courage arise from? I remember a few years ago, witnessing a great act of ordinary courage in the parking lot at the Stop & Shop. An elderly couple was slowly getting out of a nearby car. I watched in reverence as it took them a good 5 minutes to remove her walker from the car and slowly, slowly one painful step at a time advance towards the store entrance. It was beautiful, truly beautiful, and I remember saying to myself: “They are the heroes, they are the true everyday heroes.” How do we human beings find the courage to endure such hardship and how do we find the will to live?

 

The theologian, Paul Tillich, calls this will “The Courage to Be.” He recognized humanity’s deep and primal anxiety about our own mortality, about entering a state of non-being. This is an anxiety that shakes us to our bones and threatens our very sense of meaning and of wholeness. And Tillich finds that it is just at that moment when we are sinking into despair, when it seems that the dark clouds are about to suffocate us, and we gasp for breath, it is then that we uncover within ourselves the courage to endure, not refuting our primal angst, but surmounting it.

 

Tillich calls this “the courage beyond courage.” It is that which arises from within when all prior courage fails. It is that moment when things begin to turn and lighten, that moment when the stars begin to burn through the sheets of the clouds, and slowly, slowly we draw breath again, we breathe and we go on.

 

It is my belief, my friends, that we are born with this courage beyond courage implanted in our spirits, and that we feed it as we each develop our own true authentic lives. These are challenging times. Today we are all anxious about the possibility of war, dramatic shifts in the political landscape and terrorism in our own backyards. These are challenging times, times that call for moral courage.

 

These extraordinary challenges overlay the trials of our everyday lives. The challenges of watching loved ones suffer from illness, the challenge of dealing lovingly with painful divisiveness within our families, the challenge of falling stock markets, the loss of jobs and financial insecurity. Every one of us in this sanctuary faces some of these everyday problems, and it takes great courage to face them. If we do not confront them with courage, we risk becoming like bench players, watching our lives play out in quiet desperation.

 

As in Mary Oliver’s poem:

 

Let us determine to do the only thing we can do,
Let us determine to save the only life we can save.

 

Blessed Be, and Amen

Go in courage and in Peace.