“Emily Melcher - "To Love What Death Can Take"

To Love What Death Can Take

Emily Melcher

First Parish in Bedford, UU

Sunday, 29 October, 2006

Reading: “Fault Lines” by Rev. Robert Walsh

Did you ever think there might be a fault line passing underneath your living room: A place where your life is lived in meeting and in separating, wondering and telling, unaware that just beneath you is the unseen seam of great plates that strain through time? And that your life, already spilling over the brim, could be invaded, sent off in a new direction, turned aside by forces you were warned about but not prepared for? Shelves could be spilled out, the level floor set at an angle in some seconds’ shaking. You would have to take your losses, do whatever must be done next.

When the great plates slip and the earth shivers and the flaw is seen to lie in what you trusted most, look not to more solidity, to weighty slabs of concrete poured or strength of cantilevered beam to save the fractured order. Trust the more tensile strands of love that bend and stretch to hold you in the web of life that’s often torn but always healing. There’s your strength. The shifting plates, the restive earth, your room, your precious life, they all proceed from love, the ground on which we walk together.

Song: “Holy Thing to Love” by Libby Roderick

It's a human thing, a holy thing, to love what death can take.

It's a human thing to love the thing Whose loss will cause Your heart to break.

It's a funny thing we can't stop ourselves Even as we wait for the final hush.

It's a human thing, a funny thing, a holy thing to love.

I once loved a human being And then watched him slip away.

A fist smashed through my grand design I would sit alone and I could not pray.

But sometimes on a sleepless night Silent and frozen inside my fears

The angels came and circled me And sang the song only spirit hears.

Have you seen how the world moves on? Every hand we touch will go.

Every face we cherish will disappear Taking everything we used to know.

But somewhere deep inside our bones We must be tied to the morning star.

For knowing that our hearts will break, We love each other all the more.

It's a human thing, a holy thing, to love what death can take.

It's a human thing to love the thing Whose loss will cause Your heart to break.

It's a funny thing we can't stop ourselves Even as we wait for the final hush.

It's a human thing, a funny thing, a holy thing to love.

Words and music by Libby Roderick

From the recording "Thinking Like a Mountain"
Turtle Island Records www.libbyroderick.com

libbyroderick@gmail.com 907/278-6817

Sermon:

I’ve been thinking about what it is that enabled the Amish families whose children were brutalized and murdered to turn around, almost immediately, and reach out to the wife and children of the man who murdered them. What allowed some people to survive the Nazi death camps, and even to forgive? How did some rural villages of anti-trinitarians survive centuries of persecution in Transylvania? How do any of us who have lost loved ones, especially if we have too frequently watched loved ones die, or lost them too soon, or too violently – how do we find it in ourselves to keep going, and sometimes even to heal?

In his book Generation to Generation, Edwin Friedman notes “Concentration camp survival literature consistently shows that even in that hostile environment, the response of an organism could optimize the possibility of survival. It did not guarantee survival. What can, anywhere? But it could make a difference where a difference was possible. As small as the crack in the door of fate was, some saw it and some did not. Indeed, some apparently looked for it and some did not.” Why was this so?

I think, perhaps, that the answer lies in what Robert Walsh calls “the tensile strands of love that bend and stretch to hold (us) in the web of life that’s often torn, but always healing.” Those strands of love are a kind of connective tissue, linking our hearts and minds, linking past to future, linking us to one another and to the sources that nurture, sustain and challenge us, whether we call that the universe, or God, or life itself. When that connective tissue is strong and supple, individuals and communities are more creative and resilient in their response to struggles and loss, and better able to see themselves into the future. I believe this is because every strand of love we experience weaves the web of our own worth. We come to recognize love as the ground on which we walk and to know that everyone else walks that same ground.

On Dec. 30 last year, the Boston Globe carried an article about the 75 people who had been murdered in Boston that year. The Globe stated: “Many were young. Most were minorities. Fewer than a third of their deaths have been solved.” The article included photographs of each person, along with their names, ages, occupations, where they lived, and the status of the investigations of their murders. An accompanying map of Boston pinpointed the locations of each of the 75 murders.

#21 John Beresford, 40

Stabbed on May 10

No arrest

Occupation: Actor at Museum of Science; massage therapist

Lived: Dorchester with his partner

#64 David Velasques, 17

Shot on November 22

No arrest

Occupation: NA

Lived: Roxbury

#41 Damaine Brown, 19

Shot on July 23

No arrest

Occupation: About to enter William Paterson University

Lived: Dorchester with mother, brother, grandmother

I am not among those who find themselves mobilized by the unceasing flow of horrific images and stories from every corner of the world; in fact, I’m more likely to feel overwhelmed or paralyzed by the sheer volume of problems crying out for the world’s care. But that article I cut out and carried with me for several weeks. I didn’t really know why, and I don’t guess I do now, either. But I know the effect it had on me: numbers became faces and names in my consciousness, and I began to think more about how my life is related to theirs.

Did you happen to read about Isaura Mendez, the mother in Dorchester, profiled in the Boston Globe magazine two weeks ago, who has buried two sons, murdered 11 years apart, and who now lives as a witness to the violence and an activist for peace in her own Dorchester neighborhood and in other places facing similar violence? Every day, every day, Isaura Mendez touches the unbearable pain in her own heart in the hope of saving others. She lives as if her strength lies in her willingness to encounter her loss again and again; I can’t help believing that, in encountering that loss, she also encounters the tensile strands of love.

That’s the irony of it: When we live our lives with hearts wide open to pain, our hearts are also open to the very love that enables us not only to survive the pain, but to love again and again. Whom or what will we allow ourselves to love enough to suffer a broken heart for? After all, it’s in the loving that those tensile strands are formed and strengthened, those tensile strands of love that enable us to survive the loss of those we love.

It’s a courageous thing to love again in the aftermath of death, and an awesome thing to love in the face of death, and yet we do. Libby Roderick’s song suggests that “knowing that our hearts will break, we love each other all the more.” Many of us know that experience in our own lives.

My husband and I once had a marvelous, playful Old English Sheepdog named Freddie, who lived to be about 13 years old. When Freddie was dying, I moved toward him, which also meant moving toward the well of my own grief. Over the course of four or five days, Freddie grew very ill. The vet had suggested we wait a few days to see if he might get better, so, during that time I tended him, laying on the floor spooning him – he was a great, big dog -- and feeding him by hand. When I was sure he was dying, and not simply sick, I called the vet, who came and administered the drug that ended his suffering, and his life.

The other four-footed members of the household demonstrated that there are other ways to respond to an impending death. We noticed that our two cats and our dog, Ginger, moved away from Freddie as death approached. Indeed, they stopped interacting with him almost entirely in the days before he died. After he died, Ginger ignored his body completely for four or five hours, until we carried him to the car, when she followed us, sniffed him once, then turned back to the house.

At a family reunion last weekend, I found myself instinctively behaving like Ginger. When I first caught sight of my 96 year old grandmother, whom I hadn’t seen in 2 years, I was startled. Of course I know she’s old, and I know we most likely don’t have much time left, but as she shuffled her 87-pound frame toward me, and reached up and out to embrace me, I felt a great ache opening my heart. By the next evening, I realized I’d been moving away from my grandmother, instead of toward her, in order not to feel that ache, or maybe simply so it wouldn’t show. In the moment I realized that, I was able to make a different choice: to connect more deeply with her in whatever time we have available to us, strengthening those tensile strands of love, and trusting that they will hold me when she dies. I know that pulling back to protect myself from the inevitable grief only weakens those strands of love. Many of you may have had that experience, too.

At the reunion, a relative my own age, whom I barely know, spoke of how my grandmother has been a surrogate grandmother to her and her cousins, regularly traveling across the United States to be with her nieces and their children ever since her sister – their mom and grandmother -- died nearly 40 years ago. My cousin spoke of what a lady my grandmother is, and how she always treats everyone with love and respect. I recall that my grandmother, a rather reserved New Englander, transplanted to California, once walked in to a Laundromat to do her laundry, and came upon a young woman standing stark naked at the sink, washing her hair, while her clothes tumbled in the washing machine. I imagine my grandmother had a brief moment of facing herself, before she ended up conversed with the young woman while they did their laundry. I suspect that that young woman walked away in her clean clothes, feeling a little more worthy on the inside because of the respect she’d been shown; I know my grandmother did.

For years, my grandmother worked as a home school teacher, hired by the district to go into the homes of children who were not able or allowed to be in school due to illness or pregnancy. Sometimes that meant going into the homes of people with few resources: recent immigrants, families living with addiction, families in poverty. She always treated those children and their families with the utmost respect, and it was apparent that her work with them meant as much to her as it did to them. In her every contact, my grandmother strengthens those tensile strands of love, in and to herself and others and the source of her faith, which she calls God.

Every time my grandmother meets another person, she knows she has reason to be grateful.

I think that’s an important part of how the partnership between American Unitarian Universalist congregations and our Transylvanian partner churches works: Our relationships with our partner churches are not about offering charity to those less fortunate; they’re mutually beneficial relationships that strengthen those tensile strands of love in and between us. In developing these relationships, we have had to face ourselves, individually and as congregations, to acknowledge and overcome our fears, limitations, assumptions and prejudices, and to learn from others. Our partners in Transylvania, with whom we share religious roots, but whose life circumstances are so very different from our own, are no longer simply Transylvanian Unitarians, they’re people with names and faces, people whose lives are intertwined with our own.

Similar processes are at play in the commitment of many Unitarian Universalist congregations to be welcoming to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons. This commitment, too, has required of all of us – regardless of our sexual orientation – that we face ourselves. Each time we do so, we weave the web of human dignity and worth. Whatever our sexual orientations, we recognize that being in relationship with people of other orientations benefits not only them, but us, and strengthens the connective tissue of the web of life.

And what about Boston, and the spiraling violence there? Where has that sense that my life is intertwined with the lives of the 75 people who were murdered there last year -- or the 58 who’ve been murdered so far this year -- where has that sense taken me? What is my role? With one of the oldest social justice organizations in the country, the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry, ministering in Roxbury with people who struggle for decent lives, what has kept me from becoming engaged there?

There are many practical reasons, including other responsibilities and priorities and the reality that my energy is limited. All of these reasons are valid and true, but somehow I suspect I need to look further. When I summon the courage and peel away the layers, I realize a deeper truth: I am afraid. I’m afraid because I don’t know exactly what I’d do, or whether I’d be welcome or feel comfortable. I’m afraid that my own ignorance will show, or that I’ll display prejudices and arrogance I’m not even aware of. I’m afraid that I’ll hurt or offend someone. I’m afraid that I, a middle-age, middle-class, highly educated white woman, have nothing relevant to offer struggling people in the inner city. Maybe, deep down, I’m afraid to be changed, afraid spending time tutoring kids in Roxbury or working with the women and children at Renewal House will reorder my priorities, or – more difficult still – force me to face myself. Oh! I guess I just did!

There is one more thing I’m aware of, and it’s a big one: I’m afraid of being in Roxbury because the same Globe article that tells me that people are being murdered there tells me that people are being murdered there, and I can’t help fearing for my own life. Now, I’m not claiming that fear is rational; only that it’s powerful.

I guess, ultimately, I’m not sure that, in a hostile environment, I would be one of those who sees the crack in the door of fate. But suddenly this thought strikes me: I am one who sees the crack in the door of fate. The recognition that I was protecting my heart by pulling away from my grandmother and that I could make a different choice, was the crack. The article I cut out and carried it around with me without really knowing why, was the crack. The Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry’s new Action for Justice Project, which I’m becoming involved with, is the crack. For me, in my remarkably safe environment, the crack in the door of fate always offers opportunities for me to face myself and open my heart, and my life, to pain and love. Maybe some of you share that experience, too?

Through the new Action for Justice Project, the Urban Ministry is working to renew and strengthen its ties with its member congregations, and bridge the divides of race, class and ethnicity among our church communities and inner city families. We’re all invited to an orientation in Roxbury on Saturday morning, Nov. 4. I’m going, along with First Parish’s Action for Justice Project team, and we hope many of you will join us. We’ll be carpooling from church, leaving at 8:00 a.m. Please leave a message in the church office if you’re able to join us.

I’m going in order to be faithful to what I know to be true: that we can not choose what we are free to love; that in allowing ourselves to know people whose lives are more perilous than our own, we strengthen the tensile strands of love in and between us; that through facing ourselves time and time again, we weave the web of our worth; and that when we open ourselves to the pain of loving what death can take, we also open ourselves to love.

After all, nothing can guarantee our survival, whether we’re in Roxbury or right here in Bedford. We acknowledged that earlier through sharing stories of our loved ones who’ve died. Maybe our calling is not to greater security, but to making the connective tissue strong and supple, so that we, and all who walk this ground of love with us, might be better able to see ourselves into the future.