First Parish Bedford UU

These are the words of that old rascal Persian poet Rumi:

 

 

 

The song Joe Cleveland sang for ingathering was “The Only Way” by Mark Erelli. You can find the words to this song and find out more about Mark at his website: http://markerelli.com/

 

 

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

 

Charles Dickens wrote this opening paragraph for a Tale of Two Cities long ago, but these words could be written for us today. What a mix of a day this is. And what an era we live in. Today we cannot help but reflect upon a bright morning ten years ago that should never have been, and we ache with the sadness and horror of it. In the ten years since then, so much more damage has been done. Yet we also came here today to hug the people we missed and marvel at how the children grew so tall, and eat baklava created by our Iraqi friends, and dedicate a child. We are sad, and yet we sing. We are joyful and yet we cry. We’ve heard it said that our joy is our sorrow unmasked, and comes from the self-same cup. In this age of wisdom and foolishness, we gather here on the Common because the world is harsh, perhaps harsher now for many than ever before in our lifetimes.

 

Problems these days abound... access to health care, wealth inequality, joblessness, housing foreclosures, weather systems out of control, and the three foreign wars the US is still in. During his time in office, our President’s hair has turned gray and our national debt is beyond shameful. Worldwide, we see starvation in Somalia, shootings in Norway, nuclear meltdowns in Japan. In the US we worry about those who are targeted because they are immigrants, or Muslim, or look Muslim, or gay, or because they are brown, or because they are poor. These beloved ones are among us today.

 

And yet, and yet...

 

Here we are again, in our new season of hope, to do as we always do at Ingathering - to look one another in the eyes and tell our stories. We are the season of Light. Reuniting again today, we speak of the families in Vermont who carried food to each other when roads and houses were wiped away in Hurricane Irene flooding. We talk about the trust that grew in the AA and Smart Recovery meetings and how a church basement can feel like the safest place on earth. We remind each other of the Habitat for Humanity houses built nail by nail. We tell about the fields of wind power we saw on a road trip. Or in my own case, I noticed last night that my alma mater, Tufts, has stopped selling bottled water in cafeterias and now offers only cool fresh tap water instead. There is change and we must see it. We must talk about it.

 

We tell about the women who led the way on cell phones during the Arab Spring, or the young man whose best friend donated a kidney to him before it was too late. We marvel that women and people of color run for office, and nowadays can win! We tell about the number of people whose “relationship status” on Facebook changed when “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” was repealed. Let us talk about the tutoring we do with youth in Boston or refugees in Lowell, or how the anti-bullying campaign made school feel like a good place to be again. We tell of the veteran who became the best substitute teacher in the high school because he taught about real life and everyone knew it. We tell about a trip to a zen center, temple or mosque we went on with our Neighboring Faiths program and how good it felt to understand another person’s way of life and share our own.

 

We come together each fall, to fight for clarity in an age of incredulity. The gift of time with one another cannot be replaced, and we know what happens when time is cut short.

 

Today, as we meet old friends, and welcome new friends among us, we acknowledge the context of this age. It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. And yet hope is timeless. Terrible situations can be faced, addressed, mourned, dispelled and changed, through time... The kindness of strangers, the love of good friends, and the power of good intentioned well organized groups does make all the difference in the world.

 

This is why we return to religious community each year, and why we welcome the new among us; we come to tell our stories, to listen with a loving heart, to find hope or guidance again - or simply to find a way through. We return to First Parish to forgive one another and ourselves, to work with passion for a world made right, to learn and give thanks, to love and be loved, to be and become.

 

Here we unite our stories, here we return home.

 

Welcome home.

 

Perhaps you wonder how it is we decide what to talk about on Sunday morning. Actually, I spend most of the summer wondering the same thing. And of course we’re welcoming you back – “welcome every guest” our choir sang, and near as I can tell, we’re all guests here, no one is a permanent resident. And of course it’s September 11^th and whether or not we’re saturated with commemorations and memorials, it’s still September 11^th. For much of the summer Megan and I have spent time thinking about you; and while there have been a lot of happy and good times this summer, there have also been hard and challenging times for many of us.

 

At the very beginning of the summer, my mind was filled with that horrible happening in Wayland, the death of 17-year-old Lauren Astley. Do you remember? Lauren grew up at the UU Church in Wayland. Though I didn’t know her personally, she was with us in New Orleans a few years ago when a group from her church and a group from ours went there together to work after the hurricanes. And when I read the news of Lauren’s death, of course my heart broke for her and for all the friends and families and community involved in that tragedy but, to be honest, I also felt for Wayland’s minister. There would be no worse way for a minister to begin a long-anticipated summer that something like that. Don’t get into trouble, I say unto you, and especially don’t get into trouble over the summertime.  Don’t get into trouble now or ever!

 

And yet by so many events, personal and global, we are inevitably troubled.

 

Something that stuck in my mind were the words of Lauren’s father, Malcolm Astley, who used to be a high school principal in Lexington. He was able to endure that tragedy, he was quoted as saying in the newspaper, because “You’ve got to look under the anger. As Gandhi and King have said, anger against anger, hatred against hatred, does not in the end do anything more but promote more of the same. Compassion is a mighty powerful force.”

 

Malcolm Astley said that these were values that he learned and that were reinforced at his Unitarian Universalist church.

 

It gave me great pause to read what Malcolm Astley said because that is what I pray we also teach and learn here. Ours cannot be a faith just for the best of times; it must sustain us in the worst of times as well. What we do here for one another can indeed sustain us.

 

Today and throughout the year, we’ll have some mighty high times – some hearty partying and we’ll laugh and eat and drink, there will be hi-jinks aplenty and you can be sure we’ll shoot some streamers. But underneath all this we are here to learn and to teach compassion for all people and to cultivate our sense of awe and gratitude at being itself. How awesome this is. This.

 

Last week I was still mulling over what to say to you here and I went to the gym, and at the gym I went to the steam room and there in the steam room I found a soggy puckered up copy of The New Yorker. Usually there’s a soggy copy of the Boston Herald but I got lucky. And in that issue of The New Yorker I was reminded that this is an anniversary. Not the one you already know about, but this is the anniversary – the 150^th anniversary – of Rabindranath Tagore who was born in 1861.

 

How many of you have any idea who was Rabindranath Tagore? Now don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you all about Rabindranath Tagore except that he was a kind of Hindu Unitarian, one of the most revered poets in southeast Asia. Tagore wrote the words to the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh. He was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize. In Calcutta and West Bengal, to this day Tagore is a superstar; and Unitarians in America were his foremost fan club. Our hymnal is filled with Tagore’s words.

 

Tagore led a privileged and happy life until his young beloved sister-in-law died tragically. He said, until her death, “I was unaware…of the slightest lack anywhere in my life; there seemed no loophole in its tightly woven fabric of laughter and tears. Nothing was visible beyond it, hence I had accepted it as the ultimate truth. And then death suddenly arrived from somewhere. In a single instant, it tore away one end of this very visible fabric of life. How bewildered I felt now!”

 

Perhaps you too have had or can recall such an experience when death suddenly arrived from somewhere or nowhere. And you were bewildered. Especially today, I can and I expect you can also.

 

But instead of being crushed by the sudden presence of death, for the rest of his life Tagore responded to the challenge of death with an ecstatic intuitive affirmation of being. “Emptiness is a thing (we) cannot bring (ourselves) to believe in,” he said. “That which is not, is untrue; that which is untrue, is not. So our efforts to find something where we see nothing are unceasing.” (We) must leave the bonds that keep us confined, and move…. Move on, move on, move on. Move like the waterfall, like the ocean waves, like the birds at dawn, like the light at sunrise. That is why the world is so vast, the earth so extraordinary, the sky so infinite….”

 

We come to church, yet again, to compassionately remind ourselves and one another of all that is underneath the anger, the pain, the sorrow, the loss, the fear….even unto all we feel and recall this day. We are here to affirm life and all that is as vast as water and waves and birds and light. With Tagore we too may say, “Our efforts to find something where we see nothing are unceasing.”  

 

As a kind of benediction, read with me, please, Tagore’s words printed on the page: “Is it beyond thee to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm? To be tossed and lost and broken in the whirl of this fearful joy?” Amen and may it be so.

 

 

What greater affirmation of life can there be than the welcoming of new life? This morning it is our privilege to welcome Olivia Lee Daugherty, daughter of Liana, granddaughter of Rich and Nancy, member of a large extended loving family, including all here present today. Liana, come up here. Rich, Nancy, you too and whoever else is standing up for this kid, come up….

 

I tell you always, there are two meanings to this ceremony: First, we are awestruck by the miracle of life (we are glad with the gladness of this rhythm). Second, it takes a village: that whole Daugherty Clan, extraordinary as it is, is simply not to be trusted to do the job alone. It takes a village to raise a child.

 

Olivia, you come with star dust in your hair, with the rush of planets in your blood, your heart beating out the seasons of eternity, with a shining in your eyes like sunlight. Your mother brought you here to celebrate her joy, her whirl of fearful joy known to every parent throughout history.

 

Here, Olivia, you will learn to count the number of your days and to weigh their meaning, to gather into your mind the wisdom of your ancestors, to know why we call one thing right and another wrong, to treasure beauty, mercy and justice in the deep place of your being. And if your grandfather has his way you will learn about Planck’s Constant and electronegativity and vector calculus…or something.

 

Liana, if you will help her to realize the best that is in Olivia, and if you will love her with an unselfish love, will you please say, I WILL.

 

Kids…of all ages! Will you do your best to help Olivia, show her where the cookies and juice are, keep her safe, and play with her? If so, please say WE WILL!

 

We dedicate you to goodness, beauty and truth. Megan will touch you with this water, a symbol of purity and with this rose, a symbol of your unfolding life…on your brow, your eyes, your lips and your hands, that your thoughts, your vision, your speech and your actions may be dedicated to the service of peace and justice and love.

 

Olivia: from the Latin symbol of peace, the olive branch. But especially in honor of your great-grandmother Olive;

 

Lee: Old English for “meadow,” but most especially in honor of your grandmother Lee, Liana’s mother;

 

And your name is Daugherty, which is Irish and means the grandchild of Dochartach, the “unfortunate.” Though that is indeed what the genealogists say, it can’t possibly be true because all Daugherty’s – and indeed all of us - know that, in the presence of Olivia Lee Daugherty, we are most fortunate and blessed indeed.

 

 

 

Kiss your kids, too, kiss one another and while you’re at it, blow yourself a kiss as well. Amen and amen.