Fire of Thought

Deeds That Beckon

This morning’s story about Fannie Farmer reminded me how much I like to feed people.  Making food is a very concrete way of being helpful.  It’s satisfying to know that something I did helped meet a demonstrable need.  However, like Marcia (the little girl in the story), I wasn’t born with the gifts of cookery or kitchen management.

For instance, there was the time when I was a kid and I thought I would surprise my parents by running the dishwasher unsupervised.  I used the dish soap by the sink instead of dishwasher powder in the cabinet.  This produced a carpet of bubbles across the kitchen floor, worthy of an episode of “I Love Lucy.”  My parents sighed, but didn’t make a big deal about it.  They also didn’t prevent me from trying again.  Loading and running the dishwasher became my regular job.

Then there was the time when I had my first grown-up kitchen, complete with a housewarming gift of a blender.  The blender was filled with soup that had taken lots of chopping and sautéing to get to that point.  I turned it off and unplugged it, but then had trouble figuring out how to get the pitcher up off the motor.  I twisted, and half the soup came out the bottom.  I gave the blender a wide berth for a couple of months, but I came back to it eventually.  Smoothies in the summer, applesauce in the fall, soup in the winter – none of these things can be made in single servings.  Sharing is a matter of course.

More recently, I have struggled with making omelets.  I still haven’t gotten the hang of it.  In the process of working up to the challenge, however, I have discovered that I can make a crustless quiche that is quite decent.

I have had plenty of kitchen misadventures, most of which I can laugh about now.  I love feeding people, so I keep at it.  Being of service to others leads me to grow and change.  Service helps me to feel connected to role models and mythic figures I admire like Fannie Farmer.  Compassionate action helps me find common ground with others, even when we disagree in theory.

Perhaps Fannie Merritt Farmer felt the same way.  Cooking was part of her rehabilitation after a paralyzing illness (stroke or polio) in her late teens.  Working for the Shaw family, she gained skills and encouragement for her next step, enrolling in the Boston Cooking School.  After graduating, she became the Assistant Director, then the Director after the death of Mary J. Lincoln.  Farmer kept learning and teaching, taking an interest in nutrition for people who were sick, just as she had been.  Her book on cooking for ill and convalescent people went along with her nutrition lectures to doctors and nurses.  Her lectures were published in newspapers across the country.  Fannie Farmer grew unto a respected expert who used her skills for the common good.  The path of service transforms us.

The Boston Cooking School Cook Book that Fannie Farmer is known for was an updated re-issue of a text by Mary J. Lincoln.  Farmer introduced accurate measurements in her version of the book.  If you scrape a knife across the top of a cup of flour to make sure you have the right amount in a recipe, thank Fannie Farmer.  I have to wonder if revising the cookbook was a tribute to her late mentor. 

I know that, for me, the path of service provides a connection with the people I admire from history and legend.  In those moments, service is like a ritual of communion with my heroes.

Another gift of the path of service is the way it helps people find common ground.  Everybody can benefit from food science and consistent measurement, no matter what our theology.  We can all see the benefit of nutrition in therapeutic settings.  Besides that, most of us like to eat.  I’m counting on shared activity in the kitchen to build bridges in my family over Thanksgiving.  Feeding each other, doing kind things for one another, makes the space between us seem smaller.  Similarly, shared acts of service can provide peaceful resolution in situations where difference might otherwise lead to division.  Compassionate action helps us find common ground. 

There’s a reading in the back of the hymnal (#471, arranged by L. Griswold Williams) that speaks to this aspect of our tradition:

Love is the doctrine of this church,
The quest for truth is its sacrament,
And service is its prayer.
To dwell together in peace,
To seek the truth in freedom,
To serve human need,
To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine—
Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.

God language will resonate with some of us and not others, but I would be willing to bet that freedom, dwelling together in peace, and the call to service still ring true.  Actions provide the common ground.  We can find spiritual meaning and a sense of belonging with our history through compassionate deeds.

This congregation does a great job on the action part of the path of service: Sharing Table, bringing donations for the mitten tree in December, fundraising for Circle of Hope at Soulful Sundown.  Today I would like to talk about drawing inspiration from our UU heritage for the path of service, and the spiritual qualities of that path.  Deeds of compassion beckon us to be transformed, to face challenges and grow from them.  Acts of service invite us to enter the mythic tradition of fictional and real-life heroes whose actions we admire, becoming part of that story in body and spirit.  Kindness in action helps us find common ground, peace in relationship. 

Deeds That Beckon Us To Be Transformed

Compassion asks a lot of people.  Following its call means being willing to try things we’re not good at yet.  Being true to compassion means meeting challenges and growing from them, allowing our minds and hearts to be transformed. 

Dorothea Dix found that out when she entered the East Cambridge Jail in 1841.  Her first career had been as a teacher.  She had opened a private school for girls, plus a free evening school for poor children. After taking a break for her health, she volunteered to teach a Sunday class for incarcerated women.  Dix was horrified by what she saw.  The jail was unheated.  All of the residents were housed together: people who had been convicted of crimes, people with mental illness, children with developmental disabilities, all mixed together in unfurnished, unsanitary quarters.  The only thing the residents had in common was that society had given up on them.

Dix got mad.  Then she got organized.  She had never been a political activist before, but she learned how.  Using her contacts in Boston, she got a court order for heat and other improvements at the jail.  But she didn’t stop there.  Rather than turn away in disgust or attempting long-distance charity, Dix set about a systemic investigation of jails and almshouses in Massachusetts, making personal visits to document conditions.  She said, “I cannot adopt descriptions of the condition of the insane secondarily; what I assert in fact, I must see for myself.”  She read all the literature on mental illness and treatment, interviewed physicians, and learned about reformers of the past.  She gave her data to a politically connected friend who presented her findings to the Massachusetts legislature.  After some attempts at denial and misdirection, funding came through to modernize the State Mental Hospital at Worcester. 

One might think that would be the end of it.  Legislative victory!  She kept going.  Dix followed the same pattern in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.  She traveled extensively, collected detailed data about the conditions in public institutions, and delivered her findings to a sympathetic and well-known political figure.  Hospitals sprung up in her wake.  Biographer Wayne Viney writes, “Dix insisted on a therapeutic setting for the curable insane and a humanely comfortable setting for those regarded as incurable.”

Dorothea Dix took compassionate action, and it changed her into a force for reform.  Her Unitarian faith supported her personal transformation, as well as her belief in the possibility of healing and rehabilitation for others.  The path of service changes people.  Transformation is one of the goals of a productive spiritual path.

In her book, The Case for God, Karen Armstrong suggests that kind deeds are an essential part of religious life, much more important throughout human history than adherence to doctrine.  In ancient traditions of India and China as well as the Middle East, a consistent practice of compassion was necessary to unlocking each tradition’s understanding of the ultimate.  She writes, “The truths of religion are accessible only when you are prepared to get rid of the selfishness, greed, and self-preoccupation that, perhaps inevitably, are ingrained in our thoughts and behavior but are also the source of so much of our pain.” (p. 20)

To put this in UU terms, we have the image of the “interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.”  On an intellectual level, trusting the interdependent web might influence our thinking about recycling or saving the penguins.  To understand the interdependent web on a spiritual, gut level, we reflect on our experiences with compassion.  Giving and receiving services at the food pantry, we see that we are one community, we’re all connected on a human level.  Clean-up days at a beach or river or on the Bay remind us that our actions upstream affect human and animal neighbors downstream.

Which is not to say that we get compassion right on the first try.  Like any skill (cooking) or any spiritual discipline, we get better at it with practice.  Kindness takes perseverance.

The path of service spurs us to many kinds of transformation.  We meet challenges and build skills we didn’t have before.  We gain awareness of a timeless spiritual truth, which is our oneness.  Reflecting on history and our own experience, the transformation that compassion brings becomes a spiritual as well as an ethical reality.

Deeds That Beckon Us to Enter the Mythical Tradition

I believe that every group, every family, every religious tradition needs stories to provide hope, inspiration, and blueprints for action.  These stories don’t need to be factual, they do need to resonate at a deeper level.  Stories don’t have to happen exactly that way in order to be true. 

In my family, there is a story about my grandmother, who survived the dustbowl, raised her family in a company-owned mining town with few resources other than her wit and stubbornness, and eventually settled in northern California in her golden years under her own vine and fig tree.  Is the story literally true?  Parts of it are, I’m sure.  Family stories usually have elements of both fact and hyperbole.  This story gives me a sense of connection with my family.  It helps me reframe the hereditary stubbornness I see in my brothers and myself as perseverance.  The story gives me hope that trouble won’t last always.

Religious stories do the same thing on a cultural level.  The Upanishads in Hinduism, Buddha’s life story, the narrative parts of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, all of them hold metaphorical wisdom, even if the stories don’t match historical facts. 

Karen Armstrong writes that the great stories were never meant to represent historical accuracy.  She suggests that our modern habit of seeking certainty in the facts is very different from the cultures that gave birth to religious traditions.  We have lost the knack of metaphor.  Armstrong suggests framing religious stories as myths, in the best sense of the word.  Myths provide psychological truths about navigating the underworld of the psyche, or fighting the monsters of our inner demons, or winding our way through the labyrinth of an unfamiliar turn of events.  The test of a myth is not its historicity, but its usefulness to interpreting our lives now.  She writes, “The only way to assess the value and truth of any myth was to act upon it.” (p. xii)  In other words, spiritual disciplines and deeds of compassion are ways to re-enact and test the myths of a religious tradition.

As Unitarian Universalists, we have access to the wisdom of the world’s religions.  We can and do study the stories of many faiths, looking for inspiration in our ethical and spiritual lives.  This study also helps us develop empathy and respect for our neighbors of many faiths.  We still need myths of our own.  We need stories that help us, on an emotional and metaphorical level, understand who we are and how to live in the world.  Our history provides those myths.  Stories about admirable Unitarian Universalists have foundations of historical accuracy, yet they are family stories, with the same resources for coping that we might find in other myths.  When we study our prophetic ancestors and take up the path of service in our own generation, we are becoming part of that mythic story.  This is how we discover the truth of our tradition; we act upon it.

The seminary I attended invited me into one such mythic story.  My school was named after Thomas Starr King, a minister who served both Universalist and Unitarian congregations in the 1840s through the 1860s.  Starr King is known for his lifetime of service that crossed several spheres.  He got a lot done. Starr King was about five feet tall.  One of his famous quotes is, “though I weigh only 120 pounds, when I am mad I weigh a ton.”

As a nature writer, he persuaded people of the importance of preserving places like the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Yosemite Valley in the West.  His accounts were published in the Boston Evening Transcript.  Starr King has two mountains named after him, one in New Hampshire and one in California’s Sierra Nevada. 

He helped the Unitarian church in San Francisco grow into their mission as a vital congregation involved in the life of the city.  Starr King was a vocal abolitionist.  When the Civil War broke out, he traveled up and down California, speaking to everyone from miners to legislators about joining the Union instead of the Confederacy or trying to become a separate country.  He was given a lot of credit for the outcome.  In addition, Starr King was busy raising money for the Sanitary Commission.  The first big donation to come from California came through him.   

When I lived in California and walked the hills of San Francisco, sometimes I would think, “If Thomas Starr King could hike up the mountains, I can, too.”  Visiting Yosemite, I could see his point about the landscape being the scenic equivalent of Beethoven’s ninth symphony.  Hiking becomes a spiritual practice that I can identify with the UU tradition.  Financial stewardship and anti-racism work are two other areas where I feel Thomas Starr King’s presence.  Acts of service are like moveable temples, places where we can go to greet the spirits of our beloved ancestors, both blood ancestors and chosen ancestors.

Memories from the recent past add to the narrative tapestry.  I hear stories about members of this congregation who left legacies of generosity and service.  We hold them in our hearts when we commit acts of kindness.  Reaching out together as a congregation, we keep their legacy going.

When we reflect on the path of service in a spiritual way, it gives us a doorway into the great stories that capture UU collective imagination.  Sharing these stories, and acting upon them through compassionate deeds, binds us together as a strong community.  The path of service is our way of embodying the story of our people.

Deeds That Beckon Us to Find Common Ground

I have spoken so far about deeds that beckon us to be transformed and deeds that beckon us to enter the mythic stories of our heritage.  In a way, these two concepts go back to the reading I shared earlier.  “The quest for truth is its sacrament.”  We research the truth through the practice of compassion.  “Service is its prayer.”  Doing kindness is a spiritual practice, because that’s how we live out our mythic story.  The path of service also beckons us to “dwell together in peace.”  Through compassionate action, people who hold different opinions find common ground. 

Karen Armstrong writes that many of the great religious teachers of the ancient world focused more on practical application, in which anyone could participate, rather than speculation about theology.  She writes:

“One of the first people to make it crystal clear that holiness was inseparable from altruism was the Chinese sage Confucius (551-479 BCE).  He preferred not to speak about the divine, because it lay beyond the competence of language, and theological chatter was a distraction from the real business of religion.” (p. 24-25)

Armstrong goes on to say that the “real business” was practicing the Golden Rule, “all day and every day.”  She writes, “All the world faiths insist that true spirituality must be expressed consistently in practical compassion, the ability to feel with the other.” (p. xvii)  The path of service is something we can share with our neighbors of other faiths.  It is a spiritual practice that puts the arguments of doctrine on a shelf.  Compassion helps us to find common ground.  Dorothea Dix and Thomas Starr King both knew this.

Dorothea Dix set her sights on federal reform in the late 1840s.  She helped a bill get all the way through the legislature, only to face a veto by President Franklin Pierce.  She decided to work through her heartbreak on a trip to Europe.  Dix visited jails, hospitals, and almshouses in Europe, collecting data and spurring reform in 14 countries over two years.  One of the places she visited was Rome, where she presented her findings to Pope Pius IX.  Biographer Wayne Viney writes that, “Having verified the accuracy of her reports, the Pope undertook a series of improvements.  He expressed appreciation for her work and compared her to St. Theresa.”

This is a clue to the kind of chord that Dix’s work struck across the board.  Dorothea Dix was not, and never had been, a Catholic.  Her parents were evangelical Methodists.  She herself was deeply involved in Unitarianism at the Federal Street Church in Boston.  Yet she and the Pope found common ground when it came to the humane treatment of the most vulnerable people in the city.

Perhaps one of the reasons Dix could be so persuasive is that she was able to translate the path of compassion into different religious languages.  She not only occupied the common ground, she could draw a map of it so that someone with a viewpoint different from hers could get there.  Viney writes:

“In many of her letters and communications, especially those to children, Dix resorted to the language of her earlier Christian conservatism. At the same time, Dix had a deep suspicion of doctrines and creeds. She didn’t like the abstractions of theology and was a pragmatist in the good sense of that word. She felt nearest to God when she was involved in specific actions that resulted in measurable good effects.”

In other words, Dorothea Dix shared something with Confucius and the Buddha: focusing on practical spirituality in the form of compassion instead of orthodox belief.

Similarly, Thomas Starr King built alliances with diverse people by actively living out his values.  In order to save California for the Union, raise money for the Sanitary Commission, and spread the news about natural wonders in North America, Starr King needed to work with people who were not Unitarians or Universalists.  Differences of doctrine didn’t stop him on his journey.  He said, “Our mission is to hasten the time when the church in general shall modify her creeds and grant more freedom to thought and organize more charity, and receive again into fellowship the needful forces, which her narrowness has spurned.”  Building bridges between people who disagree is another skill that takes practice.  Inviting people into shared, compassionate action is a good place to start.  We learn from our heritage of service how to dwell together in peace.

In our contemporary congregations, we take into account the theological differences among ourselves as well as in the interfaith community.  We have different ideas about life after death.  We generally agree on life before death.  The song that Lea Jones sang earlier speaks to this – let’s do what we’re going to do while we’re here.  We’ll make our best guesses about right and wrong, do our share, ask tough questions while we can.  “When I’m Gone” describes actions that matter.  That’s where we find common ground.

I have found the same thing in UU church kitchens from the East Coast to the West Coast.  I remember once when the Young Adults volunteered as a group to assist the UU Society of San Francisco when it was their turn to host the homeless shelter.  There were UU pagans, UU atheists, UU Buddhists, and UU Christians running around, slicing bread and hefting massive casserole dishes into the oven.  Our diversity of theology didn’t matter, although we did have to resolve a conflict about the proper way to prepare rice.  All of us had walked past the grave of Thomas Starr King next to the church at some point; we could all share his story as our inspiration.  When we got around to discussing our differences at another time, they were merely interesting rather than divisive.

More recently, at the downtown church, a particular leader musters people to cook for a nearby soup kitchen four times a year.  She warns people not to bother showering before you arrive in the morning, because the smell of hamburger hash will come home with you. I’m more or less a vegetarian, but I don’t mind.  I imagine the essence of stir-fried beef and onions becoming part of us, linking one generation of volunteers to the next.  We are one in the spirit, we are one in the onion. 

Conclusion

I’m looking forward to participating in The Sharing Table on January 2.  This congregation has something special going with its tradition collective kindness.  Role models from UU history and from our own congregation help us see this path as a continuous road.  The practice of compassion is a tradition we receive, nurture, and share with the next generation.  May we be transformed.  May we find our place in the mythic story of UUism.  May we find common ground in the path of service.  So be it.  Blessed be.  Amen.

Note: The title of this sermon comes from a line in Hymn #358, “Rank by Rank Again We Stand,” words from John Huntley Skrine, new words by Carl G. Seaburg

Wheel of the Year

One of the public relations jobs I had in my early twenties involved event-planning to celebrate the centennial of a Catholic women’s college.  I enjoyed the woman-positive atmosphere of the college, and the spirit of shared responsibility.  We had extra centennial flair at all of the college’s traditional gatherings in the spring and the early summer: the May Pole dance, cap and gown day (when the seniors received their academic regalia), graduation, alumnae reunion. 

Finally, in high summer, we had planned a community festival, an event specifically to celebrate the centennial.  Neighbors would be invited for an outdoor concert, carnival games, a moon bounce, and food.  I had been working with the team for months to line up sponsorships from neighborhood businesses, arrange appearances from characters like Clifford the Big Red Dog, and make sure the neighbors knew they were invited.  I had paced up and down the practice field on a hot day to make sure we had enough room for the outdoor concert and the moon bounce.

The day for the festival arrived with sheets of rain.  We had a rain plan ready, thanks to the suggestion of my boss, but I was still disappointed.  What if nobody came?  It didn’t seem as celebratory to have a summer festival indoors.  We would have to give up on the moon bounce.  I dragged myself to work to get set up for the event.

In the hallway next to the post office and the bookstore, I ran into some of the retired nuns who lived on campus.  They said that rain is a symbol of renewal.  Having rain was a sign of grace for the college’s next 100 years.  Looking into their eyes, I wasn’t sure I could believe that the rain was good, but I believed that they believed it.  Their contented smiles helped me calm down.  Soon, I was swept up in the busy arrangements of the day, taking the pieces of our original plan and re-arranging them for our festival under the canopy of descending grace.  I had imagined the festival going one way, but a different day had begun. 

Change happens.  Sometimes change is delightful, sometimes it is disappointing.  We deal with hope and loss throughout our lives.  In my experience with the centennial festival, I learned once again that change takes its own turns.  When the changes are sudden or painful, we look for emotional or spiritual resources to help us cope.  I learned that instant change takes time.  We were able to turn on a dime with the rain because we had planned ahead.  In addition, I think that the contemplative preparation of the women religious was their version of a rain plan; they were able to reframe the situation from a place of spiritual centeredness.  A third thing I learned was that it is possible to begin again, to rearrange the pieces of the past in order to open the door for something new. 

I find these same three lessons in earth-based spirituality.  The constant changing of the seasons offer points of reflection for the changes in life’s seasons.  Every tradition has its own way of marking those changes, depending on geography and culture, yet there are common themes among earth-based religions.  Today, I will be mainly drawing from Welsh and Celtic mythology, ancient and re-imagined, looking for the tools of resilience at different points in the Pagan calendar.  Solstices and equinoxes, the beginnings and the ends of agricultural seasons, offer the wisdom of the wheel of the year.  Change takes its own turns.  Instant change takes time.  Begin again. 

Change Takes Its Own Turns

Dealing with disappointment and loss is one of the perennial questions for any spiritual path.  Change can be painful.  Our physical abilities may change with each passing year.  Societal changes may or may not go the way we hope. We lose the people we love to death or to circumstance.  Some changes feel like little jabs, “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,” according to Hamlet (Act III, scene i).

In this morning’s story, Cerridwen and Gwion had to deal with unintended results from the potion of inspiration and wisdom.  Cerridwen’s disappointment takes center stage as she angrily pursues Gwion.  Gwion, too, has to deal with the surprising turn of events.  Both of them go through several changes as they wrestle with what this event means.  We can sympathize with their anger and fear.  The high-speed magical chase ends with Cerridwen swallowing the seed, incorporating the experience back into her body.  Both the tale of the chase and the reincorporation of loss are important here.  First, Cerridwen experiences her anger and disappointment.  The loss is primary.  Eventually, she incorporates the loss, she swallows the seed, and it becomes part of her larger story, just a chapter in a much longer book.   

Loss reminds us of what has been precious.  Priorities come into focus.  At first, disappointment is isolating.  Pain gets the spotlight, blocking out context.  Perhaps that spotlight is necessary in order for loss to tell its story.  After that, the stage lights come up, and we see the whole ensemble, the caring networks of the past and the present.  Like Cerridwen, we can swallow the seed.  We can bring the experience inside us to meet the resources we had within the whole time. 

I’m not suggesting that we skip directly to finding the hidden gifts of loss.  I am not going to tell you to look on the bright side immediately after a painful turn of events.  Grief needs time.  Honor your experience.

The Pagan holiday that speaks most directly to loss is the one coming up next weekend: Samhain, or Halloween.  The wheel of the year turns.  On Samhain, the veil between the worlds is thin, allowing passage for the spirits of the beloved dead.  Some families set up home altars for their ancestors, displaying their pictures and favorite items.  Some families visit a graveyard during the day, sprucing up gravesites and sharing memories with each other.  During evening rituals, we name ancestors and meditate about the coming year.  Samhain is a time for both remembering and letting go. 

One of the powerful things about this holiday is not simply that we give our grief an opportunity to tell its tale, not simply that we have a ritual to help incorporate loss into a larger context, but that we do this in community with others, children and adults and elders.  The intergenerational element means an individual’s story can become part of a shared story.  UU author Patricia Montley, in her book, In Nature’s Honor, writes:

“Ritual is … a way of passing on our spiritual values to the next generation.  If, together with our children, we honor the memory of our beloved dead at a Samhain or All Souls ritual, we are teaching them the importance of a life well lived and the legacy it leaves.” (In Nature’s Honor: Myths and Rituals Celebrating the Earth, Introduction, p.XIV)

As Montley points out, both the ritual and the shared family story embody spiritual values.  These become a stable touchstone in times of change.  An annual observance like Samhain sets aside a time and provides a framework when we can feel the impact of loss, tell the story of what happened, and then re-tell the story of our lives as we incorporate the change. Change takes its own turns.  Keeping pace with the wheel of the year helps us to turn with the changes.

Instant Change Takes Time

Of course, sometimes change seems sudden when it has been building for a while.  Sometimes our response to sudden change can be built gradually, too.  Instant change takes time.  Cerridwen’s story reflects this in a couple of ways.  The potion of wisdom and inspiration took a year and a day, not to mention the time that Cerridwen put into planning.  Taliesin, the greatest bard of ancient Wales, is given an extensive backstory.  Even as early as the day when Prince Elffin takes him home, the changes in both of their lives had been a long time in the making. 

The birth of Taliesin in the story echoes a number of Pagan myths about agrarian gods who are born from a seed, rise in the growing season, die with the harvest, and leave the seeds of their own rebirth.  You may remember Dumuzi from our story two weeks ago, who travels back and forth between the Land of the Dead and the Land of the Living, according to the cycles of the growing season.  We can look to the myths of death and rebirth to find metaphors for our own experience of change.   

In many earth-based traditions, rebirth is celebrated at the winter solstice.  It seems a little bit odd that the winter solstice is the time of rebirth on so many calendars in the Northern Hemisphere.  It’s cold.  Nothing seems to be going on in the agricultural world.  We may not see much evidence of rebirth.  The word “solstice” comes from the Latin words for “sun” and “stopped” or “stationary.”  We celebrate rebirth at the time when the year is coldest, and when the sun seems to stand still.  This is the hinge upon which the year turns.  I think that the deepest part of the winter is when we need to hear that message the most.

Instant change takes time.  Stories about the rebirth of the sun remind us that warmth is returning, even though the spring is a long way off.  We can passively mark the days on the calendar, observing the return.  Alternately, we can practice and prepare a little bit with each passing day.  Giving thanks for ongoing seasonal change sharpens our awareness for dramatic changes like fall color, the first snow, or the blossoms of spring.

In our modern world, there are stories about gradual, maintenance-level, regular practice turning into the building blocks of a dramatic event.  In January, there was the emergency landing of a passenger airplane on the Hudson River in New York City.  Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III, co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles, and the rest of the crew were commended for their calm and for their extraordinary skill.  I saw one interview in which Captain Sully credited his team and his training “decades of it, tens of thousands of hours practicing to handle whatever might come along.”  (The Daily Show with John Stewart, October 13, 2009)  He is a graduate of the Air Force Academy, he has been a safety consultant and accident investigator for several years.  He was prepared as a pilot.

What’s more, Captain Sullenberger was prepared as a person for the warm public response to the event.  In the interview, he said:

“Within the first few days after landing on the Hudson, Jeff Skiles and I felt an intense obligation to do as much good as we could in every way that we could for as long as we could while attention was focused on us.”  (Interview from The Daily Show with John Stewart)

Does that last part sound familiar to anyone?  John Wesley, the co-founder of Methodism, is quoted as saying:

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.

I suspect that Captain Sullenberger learned this quote as a child growing up in the Methodist church.  Unitarian Universalists have our own quotes about commitment to service.  Earth-based traditions have their own poems and rituals about duty.  The point is that following a spiritual path gives us more inner resources to handle dramatic events.  Being ready for instant change takes preparation over time.  One of the gifts of the Pagan calendar is that it sets aside a particular time, the winter solstice, to contemplate the seeds of change when we appear to be standing still.

Spiritual or contemplative practices are like the hinge at the winter solstice.  Daily or weekly, we find some way to be present in the moment, to find balance.  Eventually, a regular sense of the present moment becomes a wellspring of balance.  To put it another way, contemplative practices are like a vitamin for spiritual growth.  I would call it vitamin G, but I think that’s riboflavin.  You may have a contemplative practice and not think of it as spiritual.  Exercise, practicing music, nature walks, memorizing poetry—each time we practice, we build capacity to handle change. 

I’m not just talking about disappointing change.  Positive changes take preparation, too.  The arrival of a new family member, embracing a new opportunity, achieving a goal, even these kinds of changes require adjustment.  With practice, we can make the most of change.

Here at UU Fallston, the greeters who stand at the door, welcoming first-time visitors and long-time members alike, you are making a regular practice that lifts our spirits and prepares us for the delightful kind of change.  The same goes for the hospitality volunteers at coffee hour and the Board members who offer the welcome at the beginning of the service.  Every person who comes in the door changes who we are as a community.  Every person makes an impact.  Welcoming people means welcoming positive change.  As I see it, practicing hospitality is a spiritual discipline that benefits us all.    

The wheel of the year teaches that the seeds of change are buried in the moments when we appear to be standing still.  Dramatic transformations come from chains of events, links that don’t seem dramatic at all until they add up.  Our capacity to make the most of change can be increased by regular spiritual practices.  By paying attention to the wheel of the year, we prepare ourselves for its turning. 

Begin Again

Viewing change as a process of rebirth is all well and good, but rebirth involves going back to a starting point.  Starting over may involve an acquired naiveté, a willingness to learn new meanings for old words, and openness to rearranging the pieces.

In this morning’s story, part of Gwion survived by transforming into a seed and then into the child Taliesen.  He became a baby.  He carried inspiration with him from his old life, and he learned other qualities in his new life. 

Similarly, Cerridwen learned to begin again.  Her old cauldron was destroyed.  But the potion of wisdom and inspiration isn’t the last story about Cerridwen.  Other legends tell of Cerridwen’s spell that would bring dead soldiers back to life.  Some say that King Arthur’s quest for the Holy Grail was actually a search for Cerridwen’s cauldron.  It’s a powerful image, a cooking pot for the transformation of life.  In her book Waking Up the Karma Fairy, UU author Meg Barnhouse invokes this image.  She writes:

“I was struggling to straighten up with an armload of toys and dishes that had to go from the backseat of my old blue Honda into the women’s shelter thrift store.  That store is like the Old Crone’s cauldron.  Celtic mythology describes the Goddess’s cauldron as the womb, the cook-pot, a place of death, transformation, rebirth.  Visiting the thrift store, I put one thing in and I pull out something else.  I throw in clothes and games, baskets and pottery when they are finished at my house.  I reach in and take out a black broomstick skirt, some brightly colored scarves, two square and heavy glasses from which my sweetheart and I drink gin and tonics when the weather turns warm.”

As the story continues, a woman outside the store asks her if she is a missionary.

“No, Ma’am.”
“You got the look of a missionary,” she said. 
“I guess I need to wear more makeup.”

The woman asks Barnhouse for a ride down the street, and she agrees.  Reflecting on the experience afterward, Barnhouse says, “The missionary thing stuck in my craw.” She says that many members of her family have been missionaries, and it’s not an identity she is eager to claim.  The story goes on:

“I talked about it with a friend who, with appalling insight, told me I had in fact been a missionary for years.  My strong belief that the female face of God is vital, and my talking about that in speeches, classes, sermons, cocktail parties, and workshops, made me a missionary.  Saying out loud, whenever I get a chance, that people do not go to hell made me a missionary, she said.  Especially here in the South where hell haunts the deep layers of even the most liberated minds. 

“The word missionary had been tossed into the cauldron of conversation and had come out transformed.  I’m walking the missionary path like so many in my family before me, with what feels like truly good news this time.” (Meg Barnhouse, “The Old Crone’s Cauldron,” from Waking Up the Karma Fairy)

Barnhouse touches on a central idea in Pagan spirituality, the faith that things can be transformed.  Old words, old ideas, old rituals, can be changed and reframed with creativity in order to carry us into the future.  We begin again, taking some things with us, leaving some things behind, making space for something new. 

On the wheel of the year, there is a holiday in early February that brings up these themes of creativity and transformation.  Sometimes called Lughnasad or Lammas, my favorite figure of this holiday is Brigid, goddess of the holy well, sacred flame, birth, art, healing, and metalwork.  A lot of responsibility for one deity, I know.  Early February is also the time of year when baby lambs are born and their mothers began to give milk.  Lammas is a time of beginnings.  Again, we mark change as the wheel turns, halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

Creativity is one of the resources that Pagan spirituality offers in dealing with change.  Pagans have a great need for the art of rearrangement.  We gather the information we can from ancient earth-centered traditions.  The rest we have to construct with imagination.  Isn’t that how it is with life-changing events?  Suddenly, it seems like everything is different.  We begin again.  Yet we can bring a few things from before.  The pieces go together in a new way.  Moving to a new home, we bring some things, leave some things behind, and arrange them differently.  Starting a job, we make the best use we can of the skills we have, and we learn new skills and new names.  Pagan spirituality sees this process of rearrangement in alignment with the forces that uphold life.

As Unitarian Universalists, we apply the same kind of creativity to our free and responsible search for truth and meaning.  Each one of us has gifts from the past, and each one of us has something that we have or would like to leave behind.  I have spoken before with gratitude about the stories and the example of love I learned in my religious community growing up, yet I belong here, where it’s not strange to preach a sermon about Pagan spirituality.  Lifelong Unitarian Universalists, too, start over in each phase of life, with this faith being differently relevant as they grow and change.  All of us have the gift and the responsibility to put our spiritual resources into the cauldron, to apply our creativity to the path of transformation.  We begin again, but we do not begin empty-handed.

Conclusion

Earth-based spirituality offers plenty of resources for responding to and participating in change.  Samhain, the winter solstice, and Lammas are just three examples of holidays with perspectives on the turning wheel.  We need those resources, because change takes its own turns, sometimes for the better, sometimes at a cost, sometimes both.  On the other hand, if we’re waiting for change to come, the universe may seem to be standing still.  Instant change takes time.  When we’ve been dipped in the cauldron of transformation, we begin again, rearranging the gifts of our past to make way for the future. 

That’s how it was at the centennial festival at the women’s college.  Everyday planning helped us deal with unexpected events.  The everyday spiritual practice of leaders in the community provided an atmosphere of gratitude and resilience.  We began the day, rearranging pieces of the plan into a different format. 

Our indoor festival welcomed hundreds of neighbors.  Gathered under one roof, it felt like a coherent community.  Everybody saw Clifford the Big Red Dog when he came in the door, along with the school mascot in her tiger costume.  Outdoors, in the wide open space, they might have been missed.  Truth be told, I think the acoustics for the centennial concert were better in the recital hall than they would have been outside.  I wouldn’t say that the event was better or worse for the rain.  It was just different than we had planned.  And it was lovely.

As the wheel of the year turns, let us give each other the strength to turn with it.  May we meet the changes of our lives with resilience and creativity.  Blessed be. 

Cerridwen Changes

This is a story about surprises.  Sometimes surprises are disappointing, sometimes surprises turn out better than anyone imagined.  I don’t know if the story happened exactly this way, but I believe it’s true.

A long, long time ago, far across the Atlantic Ocean, there lived a powerful sorceress named Cerridwen.  She lived with her husband and children on an island with green meadows and rocky shores.  Cerridwen wanted to make a potion that would be a present for her son Avaggdu.  The first three drops of the potion would give someone magical gifts of inspiration and knowledge, but the rest of the potion was no good.  She would make the potion in her giant cauldron, which is an iron pot that sits over a fire. 

The recipe for this potion was tricky.  Cerridwen would have to go out and gather the ingredients every morning for a year and a day, while someone else stirred the pot and kept the potion boiling.  Cerridwen hired a young man named Gwion.  He worked very hard, stirring the pot every day, even when his arms got tired.  He stirred the boiling potion in the fall, in the winter, in the spring, and in the hot, hot summer.  Gwion stirred for a year and a day. 

On the very last day, Cerridwen told Gwion, “The potion may be good enough, but I’m going to go pick a few more herbs just to be sure.  After all, if it’s not right, we’ll have to work for a whole year and a day to try it again.”  The potion was very hot and very bubbly.  Plop!  Plop!  Plop!  Gwion kept stirring.  A big bubble of hot potion burst: plop!  Three drops splashed out of the cauldron, burning Gwion’s fingers.

“Ouch!” said Gwion, and he put his fingers in his mouth to soothe the burn.  He tasted the liquid on his fingers, and he knew right away that he had taken the first three drops of the potion, and that everything else in the cauldron was no good.  Gwion didn’t need a magic potion to understand that Cerridwen was going to be very angry!

Those gifts of inspiration and knowledge did help Gwion think fast to come up with a plan for a magical escape.  He turned himself into the fastest animal he could think of, a rabbit, and hopped out of the workshop as quickly as possible.  Just then, the cauldron, with its no-good leftover potion, split into pieces.  The awful cracking and sloshing sound brought Cerridwen in from the garden.  She knew Gwion must have tasted the first three drops of the potion, he took the magical gifts of inspiration and knowledge, and her whole year of work was ruined.  Cerridwen turned herself into a hound and followed the smell of Gwion the rabbit as he raced across the meadow. 

Gwion hopped and hopped and hopped until he ran out of meadow.  Sniffing the air with his little bunny nose on the edge of a wide river, Gwion smelled Cerridwen coming in the form of a bloodhound.  Just in time, Gwion changed himself into a fish and jumped in.  Cerridwen saw the fish leaping into the water.  She changed herself into a river otter and chased after him.  Gwion was swimming as fast as his fins would carry him, while Cerridwen glided through the water, closer and closer. 

Gwion leaped out of the water again and changed himself into a bird, hoping to lose Cerridwen among the farms and fields on the other side of the river.  Cerridwen the otter scrambled up to the bank of the river and changed herself into a hawk, screaming in pursuit.  As he flew over a barn, Gwion looked through a hole in the roof and saw seeds and grain scattered on the floor.  Gwion turned himself into a single seed and dropped through the hole in the roof, settling on the floor.  A high crested black hen came into the barn, scratching and pecking.  It was Cerridwen, who had changed herself into a chicken.  She found Gwion the grain and ate him up whole.  She clucked happily and changed herself back into a human.

Gwion had one more change left in him, too.  Inside Cerridwen, he changed from a seed of grain into the beginnings of a baby.  For nine months, Cerridwen held the transformed baby in her belly.  That gave her a long time to think.  She decided that, while she had been frustrated when things didn’t go the way she planned, there was nothing else to do except get another cauldron and try some different potions.  Being angry wouldn’t reverse the magic.  Cerridwen was still a powerful sorceress, and she could see enough of the future to know that this baby had a destiny far away.  When the baby was born, Cerridwen made him a special boat and sent him across the sea.  Because of her magic, she knew that the baby’s forever family would find him.   

And, indeed, that’s just what happened.  A prince named Elffin was out fishing and was surprised to find the boat with the baby inside.  He brought the baby home to be part of his family.  The baby grew up to be Taliesin, the greatest of all Welsh poets.  Prince Elffin was always proud of Taliesin, who grew up with the same gifts of knowledge and inspiration that he received in another life, in another land, far away. 

I don’t know if the story happened that way.  I don’t know if there was a sorceress named Cerridwen or a young man named Gwion who turned themselves into different animals.  What I believe is true is that sometimes things turn out in surprising ways.  Sometimes surprises are disappointing, sometimes surprises are wonderful.  I believe it’s true that, even if we can’t change ourselves into bunny rabbits, we can change our hearts to welcome new surprises and new adventures.

(Re-telling by Lyn Cox based on various sources, including this one and this one, plus Eternally Bad: Goddesses with Attitude by Trina Robbins.)

Circle of Life

We tried our first experiment with growing food this year.  Throughout our adult lives up until a year and a half ago, our household has been moving about every two years, never sure how long we would stay or how much home improvement we could get away with.  Now that we finally feel settled, we took a tentative step with container gardening.

The first wave of plants came as housewarming presents: lemon basil, a strawberry plant, and cuttings from a friend’s rosemary bush.  The rosemary cuttings didn’t take.  When we went to get containers for the lemon basil and the strawberry, we also picked up some cucumber seeds.  Once we got home and transplanted the lemon basil, it looked lonely in the window box, so I got some mint and red basil to keep it company, plus some thyme and another attempt at rosemary for the side pockets of the strawberry pot.  We planted the cucumber seeds in a tray and dared to hope. 

By mid-June, everything was growing except our cucumber seeds.   I was ready to give up, but my partner wanted to give cucumbers another try.  We used a different starter container.  My partner talked to the seeds every day to encourage them.  They came up! Little green shoots poked their heads above the surface of the soil.  Every day, we mist them gently with water.  My partner regularly told the sprouts out loud how lovely and strong they were.  At the end of July, just in time for us to leave for vacation, they unfolded their first, false leaves.  We brought the container to a friend, who agreed to water and talk to the cucumber sprouts every day. 

When we got back, our little sprouts were stronger than ever.  We bought a rectangular container to put on the patio, where we could keep an eye on it.  Thinning the seedlings was heartbreaking, but necessary.  Over the next week, we watched nervously to see if the plants would survive the shock of newfound freedom. 

At last, broad, prickly leaves spread out toward the sun.  Yellow blossoms appeared.  Soft tendrils spiraled out from the container, reaching for security and grabbing hold of the nearby ferns.  I bought a trellis.  It seemed much taller than we would ever need, and didn’t quite fit inside the container, but it stayed upright.  The cucumber vines wove into it with natural affinity.  We learned to gently guide the vines for maximum air circulation, which helped protect against leaf rot.

Every morning, we crept outside to see the cucumber plant with hope in our hearts like Christmas morning.  Each new yellow blossom was a marvel.  When the flowers gave way to little, gherkin-sized baby cucumbers, we were ecstatic.  Some of the leaves started showing signs of being nibbled at by insects.  Ladybugs came to the rescue, and the destruction stopped.

In September, the squirrels discovered that they liked to eat basil and strawberry leaves, but they left cucumber and the other herbs alone.  Last week, the cucumber plant reached the top of the impossibly tall trellis, and it is still growing.  Some of the cucumbers look almost like real food.  It’s an open question whether we’ll get a chance to harvest them before one of our animal neighbors does, or before the frost comes.  Whatever happens, we will always have the delight of watching a miracle unfold, from bare soil to determined sprouts to exploring vines. 

Next summer, I think we will be ready to try tomatoes as well as cucumbers.  We’ll be more conscious of our animal neighbors.  We will probably grow basil as a public service for squirrels.  The birds would enjoy sunflowers.  We have all winter to let the soil rest and to dream.  

At UUF, the theme of the month for October is one of the six sources of the Unitarian Universalist tradition: “Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” The earth-centered religions with which I am most familiar comes from the ancient traditions of Europe and the Middle East, filtered through the creative process of modern Pagan communities.  There are many perspectives on those religions; and there are many, many other traditions that fall under the earth-centered umbrella, so I hope you will forgive the limited scope of what I can share about them today.  When I reflect on source number six, I draw on my direct experiences with the earth as well as my understanding of Pagan literature and legend. 

Our adventure with the cucumber plant leads me to a few thoughts about the circle of life.  To begin our experiment, we had to trust the possibility of growth and to accept the unknown.  My partner persuaded me to make a second attempt at growing cucumbers.  We couldn’t predict results, we didn’t know if there was anything going on underneath the soil.  We depended on a friend to help us keep watch over the precarious beginnings.  Dormancy and uncertainty are part of the cycle. 

In addition, I learned the value of taking another look.  Neither the rosemary nor the cucumber seeds worked the first time.  On top of that, taking another look each morning brought new discoveries: new leaves, new blossoms, new information about how to adjust the vines.  In the cycle of each day, it was helpful to remember all that had come before while seeing the plant with fresh eyes.  Being open to surprise was both uplifting and informative. 

Finally, I was reminded once again that we are part of an interdependent web.  The squirrels, rabbits, bees, and ladybugs behaved differently at different points in the season.  We learned to be flexible about sharing the land.  Working with our little corner of the ecosystem, being open to its unique diversity, was more satisfying than trying to completely control it. 

I believe that these three points are echoed in earth-centered spiritual traditions, as well as in the words of nature-loving poets:  First, trust the magic beneath the surface.  Dormancy and uncertainty are part of the cycle.  Second, turn toward surprise.  Take another look, and see things again for the first time.  Third, keep the circle whole.  Opening our hearts to diversity brings resilience and strength. 

Trust the Magic Beneath the Surface

Watching as nothing apparently happens is difficult.  We aren’t trained to do that in the modern world.  We’re trained that we should have measurable productivity in every moment, that we can work all night with the lights on, that our activity level should be full speed ahead from winter to spring and summer to fall.  Dormancy and uncertainty are frightening, like a trip to the underworld.  Yet the underworld is the place where seeds begin to take root.  It is the place of mystery, where the turning points of our lives can be called forth. When we take the risk of letting apparent dormancy do its work, we may be rewarded with transformation and renewal. 

This, I think, is part of what the story of Inanna’s descent into the underworld can teach us.  Inanna had to let go of her outward signs of importance in order to enter the place of mystery.  She was like the seed of spring, fed under the soil by insects bearing the food and water of life.  For Inanna to make a change in her life and in the world, she had to come to terms with the limits of her own power, finding something in common with others who experience the cycle of life. 

This vulnerability may be the most frightening thing about dormancy and uncertainty.  Who am I if I am not producing something?  Who am I without my crown and symbols of authority?  Fear whispers that we stand and fall on our own merits alone, we have to keep pushing the lever to make things work.  The circle of life teaches that living things move and rest in turns.  Sometimes we have to stop pushing in order to feel the pull of something deeper.  The descent into the underworld is at once a journey each person makes alone and an act of faith that we are not alone in the universe. 

The version of Inanna’s story this morning is adapted from a retelling by Starhawk, who writes about Pagan spirituality and applies those teachings to social justice.  (The retelling can be found in Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions.)  In her book, Dreaming the Dark, Starhawk writes about sources of courage for spiritual growth and public advocacy.  She writes:

Like Inanna, Persephone, Osiris, Dumuzi — like all goddesses and gods who descend and return — we too can enter the kingdom of that which we fear most … Within that kingdom, when we join in community, in solidarity, we too can find sources of strength and renewal — the true magic that dissolves fear.

I think what Starhawk is saying here is that the tools of our survival are hidden in the places where we confront uncertainty. 

For us in the modern world, I believe we have to gather up courage to enter into the uncertainty of changing seasons and cycles.  Descending into contemplation looks like letting go of power, it looks like letting go of activity and productivity.  Yet contemplation is a source of spiritual and emotional energy.  Maybe that’s why coming to church is so hard: an hour of community and contemplation, if we take it seriously, might lead us to change and grow.  That’s kind of scary.  If we feel like we have to live in fifth gear, spending time on spirituality might feel like putting on the breaks.  Yet we need to stop at some point to get more energy for our wheels.  Fill the tank, charge the battery, soak up the solar energy.  Name your metaphor for power, we need to be receptive — passive, in a way — to some form of renewal. 

To everything there is a season.  This morning’s story teaches that there is a season for Dumuzi, the spirit of the grain, to live under the ground as a seed, and a season for the grain to rise in the open air.  There is a season for Geshtinanna, the spirit of the grape, to grow on the vine, and a season to be kept in the cool storehouse under the earth.  In the story, life and growth on earth depended on the willingness of the gods and goddesses to descend and return.  We all depend on each other to respect the magic underneath the surface, to alternate activity and contemplation so that we have the energy to support one another in times of change. 

Marge Piercy writes:

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.

(Excepted from “The Seven of Pentacles,” reprinted as reading #568 in Singing the Living Tradition)

Marge Piercy and the legend of Inanna and the anticipation of seedlings all agree that there is something powerful in the dark, quiet, unseen part of the cycle of life.  When we find a rhythm of setting and rising in our lives, when we move boldly through the underworld of the unknown, we can learn from the wisdom of the turning earth. 

Take Another Look

A second bit of wisdom from earth-centered spirituality is to take another look.  If we see time in terms of seasons and cycles, the same themes tend to come around again.  Each time, we have a new perspective, more accumulated knowledge, to approach that theme in a new way.  We can look at time as a spiral, turning ever outward with experience that covers more ground with each cycle. 

Holidays and annual celebrations bring the spiral of life to mind.  Some traditions may stay more or less constant, while the cast of loved ones and the societal conditions might change from year to hear.  In my family, Thanksgiving is the holiday with the most continuity from year to year.  The annual regularity and the strong value on family togetherness make Thanksgiving a holiday I can count on, making each year’s changes more noticeable.

I remember the year I presented a vegetarian Tofurkey as an alternative alongside turkey and ham.  It didn’t go over well.  The next year, I brought stuffed acorn squash, which wasn’t popular, but at least nobody laughed at.  From year to year, I watched my younger cousins get taller.  New spouses and close family friends join the celebration.  We share affectionate memories of those who are no longer with us.  We ask each other for news about family members who chose to celebrate with their in-laws or who had to work that day.  The annual holiday makes us keenly aware of what’s new.

The danger with a seasonal celebration is that sometimes the continuity seems more important than being aware of the present moment.  Forcing a ritual that has lost its meaning, or putting all of our energy into maintaining conformity to tradition, obscures our vision of this year, this time, this moment.  Continuity can give us an axis around which to turn, but we still need to stay in motion in order to keep up momentum.   

T.S. Eliot writes:

What we call a beginning is often the end
and to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.

(From The Four Quartets, reprinted as reading #685 in Singing the Living Tradition)

For me, seasonal celebrations provide a place to start and to end a year of exploration.  Through the lens of another year of life, I can arrive again among my family and “know the place for the first time.”  I can listen for concerns I hadn’t heard before,  I can take on new responsibilities in the family.  If I saw time as a straight line, I might miss the resources that continuity provides from one year to the next.  If I saw time as a closed circle, I might resent the inevitable change from year to year, or the growth of our family beyond what we can contain in a single celebration.  By seeing time as a spiral, I can “make a beginning” each year, and I can allow the element of surprise into my life.

I’m curious about the annual traditions in your life that give you a chance to reflect on the spiral of time.  Perhaps you have an annual pilgrimage, or an important family holiday, or the anniversary of a significant personal event.  Perhaps the first snowfall of winter or the first blossoms of spring help you synchronize with the rhythms of nature. 

Let us allow the earth to teach us to turn toward surprise, to notice the new cucumber blossoms each morning, while drawing together in the continuous flow of the seasons and cycles of life.  “We shall not cease from exploration.”

Keep the Circle Whole

I’ve spoken so far about respecting the magic underneath the surface and turning toward surprise.  A third teaching in earth-centered spirituality has to do with the value of difference.  A circle has 365 degrees of different perspectives; we need diversity in order to keep the circle whole.

Diversity is vital for the survival of uncultivated wilderness and for healthy farms.  When I was growing up, my grandfather raised dairy cows.  His herd was mostly made up of Brown Swiss cows.  I remember some Guernseys and some Holsteins.  There might have been a few Jersey cows, although it’s hard for me to tell the difference between Jerseys and Brown Swiss.  Similarly, he planted a variety of feed crops, both hay and corn.  Diversity on the farm makes sense; don’t put all your eggs in one basket. 

In the farming practices of the Iroquois and many other Native American peoples, corn, beans, and squash were planted together.  These “three sisters” benefit each other.  Corn gives the beans something to climb.  Beans provide nitrogen to the soil.  Squash leaves spread out and block sunlight from weeds as well as providing mulch.  Diversity works better than monoculture. 

Diversity definitely has a place in the health of human communities.  Starhawk writes:

We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been — a place, half-remembered, and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time.  Community.  Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats.  Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power.  Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done.  Arms to hold us when we falter.  A circle of healing.  A circle of friends.  Someplace where we can be free.

(Chapter Six, “Building Community: Processes for Groups,” in Dreaming the Dark.  Special thanks to my colleague Rev. Wendy von Zirpolo for calling my attention to this quote at exactly the right time.)

Starhawk identifies immanence as a key concept in Pagan spirituality and in working for the common good.  Rather than basing religion on a distant, outside authority, she explores “power-from-within,” the power of growth, making choices, and creating.  Earth-based spirituality celebrates the holiness of that which is right here, under our feet and in our bodies.  The community envisioned in the quote, one where everyone is free to “speak with passion,” depends on an atmosphere that allows power-from-within to flourish.  Because each one of us manifests that energy in our own way, we have to be ready to receive a variety of voices. 

Obviously, this is easier said than done.  We can say we welcome diversity, but actually engaging is much more difficult.  In a human community, we have to talk about our differences in order to draw strength and freedom from our diversity.  Talking about our differences means risking conflict.  Not talking about our differences means risking the loss of our authenticity and freedom.  We can learn to speak our passions without doing emotional violence.  We cannot learn to trust one another without sharing our true selves. 

Here in Fallston, we invite that kind of authenticity each week in rituals like Joys & Sorrows and Discussion & Sharing.  We commit and re-commit to welcome each other, each one of us with a unique tapestry of heritage, family, politics, and spiritual convictions.  It’s a precious gift when one person can share satisfaction and insight from an atheist perspective, another person from a theist perspective, and another person from a panentheist perspective.  I’m so glad we can have those conversations here.  I believe we can go even deeper.  We can find time to reveal a little more about the parts of our identities we hold most tenderly, building trust and mutual encouragement for spiritual growth. 

This kind of depth is of vital importance.  Honest engagement with our diversity helps us to harness the power of our connections.  In her book Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde describes this opportunity in a way that echoes the underworld metaphor:

Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.

(Excerpted from “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde.  A partial preview of this essay is available on Google Books.  Special thanks to my colleague Rev. Sean Dennison for calling my attention to this quote.)

In my own life, when I can work with a group and be honest about all of the aspects of my identity, it makes a huge difference in how well I can function and how much energy I can give to the group.  When we can name the dynamics of gender and race, I can breathe a little easier.  Identity doesn’t have to be the focus, I just need to know that certain topics are not off-limits. 

The stakes get even higher for me when we’re talking about sexual orientation.  As a bisexual minister, I often find myself in one of two kinds of situations.  I am regularly around diverse people of faith, and some of them worry about the influence of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender people on society.  On the other hand, sometimes I am around GLBT people who have been rejected by the religious communities where they grew up, and they have some apprehension about making friends with a religious professional.  In both cases, I can understand their concerns, and I hope we can agree to disagree on some topics. 

Relaxing into the agreement happens when we can speak directly about the topics that matter most.  Until that happens, part of me is always holding my breath.  When I am in a group that shares honestly about our true selves, I can stop holding my breath and devote my full voice to whatever work is before us.  I suspect the same is true for many of us – the more we entrust with each other with our tender, true selves, the more energy we have for our shared mission.  That’s what thriving diversity looks like.

Earth-centered spirituality affirms that diversity and flexibility bring resilience.  We are part of an interdependent web.  Maintaining relationships across that web is satisfying, and ultimately more successful than attempting to control time and space.  May we treasure the threads in our hands that connect us to human communities, to the ecosystem, and to the seasons and cycles of life. 

Conclusion

The earth offers as many lessons as there are rocks in the soil.  Learning wisdom from the planet and from the spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions is a lifelong path.  When we trust the magic underneath the surface, our forays into contemplation and uncertainty can help us to plant the seeds of change.  When we follow the spiral of life, the cycles of each day and each year can provide both continuity and surprise.  Take another look to meet the new insights of each successive turn of the spiral.  Keep the circle whole by actively engaging with the differences that give us strength.  In nature and in human communities, diversity is a source of power.  May we celebrate and honor the interdependent web of life.  Blessed be. 

How do you handle the transitions of seasons and of generations in your spiritual life?

Newsletter Column October 2009

As I write this, my yard is a study in transitions.  The herbs we have kept in pots all summer continue to reach for the sun.  All our herbs, that is, except the red basil, which was recently discovered by a hungry squirrel.  The dogwood trees are beginning to blush on one side, while the sugar maple sports shocking yellow highlights in its green crown.  A few pioneering leaves have fallen on the still-green grass.  I imagine that, by the time you read this, the fall colors will be center stage, lavishing their leafy abundance on the ground. 

October brings dramatic reminders of the seasons of the year and the seasons of our lives.  Pumpkins and acorn squash give a foretaste of the family holidays to come, generations of seasonal foods for generations of people.  Some folks have begun their Halloween preparations, creating costumes and sweets that connect the young with the young-at-heart.  Those who celebrate All Souls/All Saints, Día de los Muertos, or Samhain take time at the end of October to reflect on the transition between life and death and to give thanks for ancestors who have gone before us.  Our cultures and the earth itself tell us to pay attention to transitions this month.

At UUF, our theme of the month for October is “Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.”  This is one of the six sources of the Unitarian Universalist tradition that are named in the UUA bylaws.  Ironically, this oldest source of human inspiration is the most recent one to be articulated in relation to Unitarian Universalism.  I guess sometimes we take our most precious gifts for granted at first.

Our beautiful surroundings at UUF are an obvious draw for living in harmony with the rhythms of nature. Members take great care of the plants and the environmental details.  We have room to work and play on the grounds, inviting us to form a friendship with the earth that supports our religious home.

I am wondering what you think about the sacred circle of life.  How do you handle the transitions of seasons and of generations in your spiritual life?  What are some ways that we, as a religious community, already live in harmony with the rhythms of nature?  How might we do more as a community in relationship to the earth?  Change is part of life, yet difficult to handle.  How do we support one another in times of transition?  I look forward to hearing your answers in the coming weeks.

Kindle One Flame

Written for the Unitarian Universalists of Fallston
September 27, 2009

(Note: This sermon refers to The Sacred Flame story, which you may wish to read first.)

Clara was restless.  She had moved from Washington, DC, to Massachusetts after losing her government job.  She spent time with family and looking for employment. She studied French and art.  She got along, but there was something missing.  Clara looked back on a decade of success as a teacher in her twenties.  That career didn’t seem to be right for her anymore.  Her time in the U.S. patent office during her early thirties had been invigorating, with evenings spent in Washington society and days spent with plenty of work on her plate.  Maybe a little too much work had been on her plate, actually.  But all of that went by the wayside when the new president was elected and she was laid off in 1857.  For four years, she went without a clear idea of her mission in life.

The election of Abraham Lincoln brought Clara an offer to return to Washington.  At first she was working in the patent office again as a temp for less than her earlier pay.  Her liveliness and cheer returned.  Clara realized that what she needed was to feel needed.  When wounded Civil War soldiers started arriving in Washington, her calling came into focus.  Some of those soldiers were her former students.  They all needed care, and they needed personal supplies to replace the ones that had been lost in battle.  She found a way to be of service that was entirely different from her first two careers.  Clara Barton became an Angel of the Battlefield. 

She honored her passion for service as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War, getting as close to the front lines as possible.  She preferred to jump in wherever there was an opportunity to serve, following her instincts rather than someone else’s plan.  After the war, President Lincoln put her in charge of helping families find out what became of the soldiers who never came home.  She supplemented her income on the lecture circuit, speaking about her war experiences. 

In 1870, she found a connection between her own passion for service and an increasingly interdependent global community.  She was in Europe, theoretically to get some rest, when she heard about the Geneva Convention and the International Red Cross.  She set up aid centers in war-torn cities, earning the Iron Cross for her work.  She found a new mission in Europe, but not the rest she needed.  After she got home, she recuperated in Massachusetts for a time, working up the strength to make two trips to Washington in 1877.  With the help of advocates like her, the United States signed the Geneva Convention in 1882. 

Clara Barton is best known for organizing the American Red Cross in 1881 and for serving as its president until 1904.  Those pioneering years were difficult and chaotic for the young organization, even as the need for humanitarian response became clear.  Today’s Red Cross has its own challenges, yet the idea of a world community of compassion remains a compelling vision.  (Biographical details about Clara Barton in this sermon are chiefly drawn from the Dictionary of UU Biography.)

Today, let’s talk about passion.  Let’s talk about the flame within each one of us, the way it sometimes “goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.”  Let’s talk about bringing those lights together into a fire circle that brings warmth to all, and how to be the people who rekindle the flame in others.  In considering how to channel “our separate fires” into “one flame,” I would like to make three suggestions.  Honor the spark.  Share fire and fuel.  Rekindle the spark for others. 

Honor the Spark

For Clara Barton, the flame that animated her was not the same from her twenties to her thirties to her forties and beyond.  Honoring her spark meant being open to a new way of being.  Looking back, we can see a common thread in her lifetime of service.  For the thirty-eight-year-old Clara, however, the pre-Civil War Clara, I bet she had no idea what was coming next.  I imagine that the next chapter to come into her life was like a falling star, the sort of light that one is more likely to find when on the lookout, yet something apt to surprise a person in any case.  Clara Barton caught that burning ember with both hands and ran with it.

Something similar happened to Raniero di Raniero in this morning’s story for all ages.  He saw himself as a fighter.  Winning recognition for being fierce and strong seemed to be the central concern in his life.  I would suggest that Raniero accepted the spark, not when he lit his first candle in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, not even when he made a public vow to bring the flame back to Florence, but when he decided that his mission was more important than winning a fight with bandits.  Raniero had to choose between the person he thought he was and his deeper sense of purpose.  Accepting the spark meant learning skills he wasn’t so good at, like being patient. 

Looking back, I can see a common thread in Raniero’s life.  He was always committed to generosity in his community.  His outward reasons may have been a little off at first: a desire for admiration from others, a way to prove himself, maybe a rush of adrenaline.  When his spark got hold of him, however, those disguises dropped away.  He didn’t worry about whether other people would see the value of his gift, or how to account for it on a ledger.  He stopped caring about whether his most difficult mission would bring him glory.  Raniero’s story is a legend, and so there is perhaps more clarity than in real life, but I think it’s a good illustration that sometimes our talents are hidden inside our obvious faults.   

A personal mission, a passion for service, can sneak up on us.  The ignition may be a casual hobby, or an unexpected invitation to leadership, or the recognition of a need.  Part of what it means to honor the spark is to accept its arrival.  We’re not always completely ready.  Clara Barton could have said, “Gee, thanks, International Red Cross, but I’m not a politician or a diplomat.”  She spoke from her experience, and she leveraged the reputation she gained from her experience into a public platform. As a child, Clara had been painfully shy and had a speech impediment.  Her parents encouraged her to become a teacher as a way to overcome that.  Clara was terrified to become a teacher, but she discovered that jumping into the fray and meeting what seemed to be an impossible need was worth giving up her fear. 

The next thing to do in honoring the spark is to learn what we can in order to carry the flame forward.  One of my sheroes in professional ministry, Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt at the Fourth Universalist Society in New York, is often quoted as saying “God does not call the qualified.  God qualifies the called.”  (I have since heard this quote from other sources, but I heard Rev. Rose say it first, and I always imagine this quote in her voice.)  Whether you believe that calling comes from God or the Universe or the voice of the community, I hope we can agree that we can accept the beginning of a personal mission before we’re trained for the end of it.

Underpinning all of that is hope.  Accepting a spark means being willing to act as if what we do matters.  The flame within us can be kindled when we believe that our mission is worthwhile.  Sustaining that fire is where other people come in. 

Share Fire and Fuel

Our opening reading this morning from Albert Schweitzer reminded us that, at times, “our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.”  Carrying the flame of a mission is easier in the company of other travelers.  Raniero di Raniero was reluctant to share the holy flame with a family’s cooking fire.  Lighting their hearth did nothing to diminish his own flame, and having shared the fire ultimately saved his mission. 

In the 1908 book that “The Sacred Flame” is drawn from, there are more details about the kindness of other pilgrims, who share food and candles with Raniero during his journey.  He galloped out of the camp in Jerusalem with enough tapers to last a few months, not realizing how slowly he would need to travel in order to maintain the flame.

Even when we make plans to be self-sufficient, we get by with a little help.  It can be hard to admit that.  The sooner we see the truth of our interdependence, the sooner we can take pleasure in gratitude, the sooner we can be graceful about accepting help when it is offered, the sooner we can practice generosity in turn.  Raniero took awhile to come around to the idea that he had received help and continued to need help in completing his mission.  He was almost home before he completely figured this out.  In our twenty-first century, individualist culture, I think many of us would have the same difficulty. 

The book Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World (1997, Beacon Press: Laurent Parks Daloz, Sharon Daloz Parks, Cheryl H. Keen, and James P. Keen) wrestles with such challenges.  Common Fire is a report from a landmark study of individuals who maintain a commitment to the common good without getting burned out.  The researchers found that a sense of connectedness was important to sustaining the spark we’ve been talking about. Common Fire suggested that the idea of the commons, like the town square, was less prevalent in the 21st century, making connection hard to come by.  Nevertheless, the leaders interviewed for the study named mentors, colleagues, and communities as essential for their continued success.  Another factor that the report uncovered was that resilient leaders are aware of the way their mission links into an interdependent world.  It helps to know how a project connects to a larger whole. 

This second factor, seeing connections with a larger system, reignited Clara Barton during her sojourn in Europe beginning in 1870.  She had thrown her body into the gaping need for a humanitarian response during the Civil War.  She had taken charge of a challenging and emotionally difficult project by researching the names of missing and dead Civil War soldiers in order to help families find needed closure.  She knew what it was like to pour out compassion on her own steam.  Joining a world community of humanitarians helped Clara Barton connect her personal vision of service with something larger.  Linking the American Red Cross with the International Red Cross gave Clara access to a source of energy that helped sustain her work for twenty years. 

The international movement was not the only network that Clara Barton found to sustain her work.  She made friends with suffragists of all stripes, believing that voting rights for African Americans and for women were connected to what she was fighting for through the Red Cross.  Frances Dana Gage was a Universalist like Clara, and mentored her in working with former slaves as well as the fundamentals of suffrage advocacy.  Under her influence, Clara became a suffrage advocate as well,

In 1867, Clara Barton met two of our Unitarian role models, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Although Clara had been on the lecture circuit for a year and supported women’s suffrage, she hadn’t yet spoken about it publicly.  The three developed what we might think of as a coalition.  Susan B. Anthony promoted Clara Barton’s lectures and Clara Barton mentioned women’s suffrage in her reflections on her wartime service. “Soldiers!” she would cry. “I have worked for you and I ask you, now, one and all, that you consider the wants of my people… . God only knows women were your friends in time of peril and you should be [theirs] now.”  Humanitarian relief, especially the Red Cross, was Clara Barton’s main concern, yet she saw the value in connecting her mission of service with a wider community of advocates. 

Raniero di Raniero and Clara Barton and the authors of Common Fire all point to the need for us to give and receive support as we keep the flames alive.  This, I believe, is one of the compelling arguments for working with and through religious communities as we channel our sparks into a sustained mission.  In a religious community, we find other people with whom we can trade inspiration back and forth.  All of us are going to have times when we need to be rekindled.  Congregations are meant to hold people of all ages, at all times in our lives, so it makes sense that the people of a congregation would have lamps in various phases of shining at any given moment. 

A religious community also provides a tradition of hope, a heritage to take up from people like Unitarian Universalist suffragists of the past.  Faith communities are set up to help people grapple with meaning.  This is the place where we ask questions about how our separate passions fit into something larger.  When we work with and through congregations, we have people of the past and people of the present to assure us that we are not alone.  Not-alone-ness is vital to keeping a flame alive. 

When I think about individual people craving some connection as they seek a mission, the picture I get is UU Young Adults sitting in a circle.  As you may know, I was deeply involved in ministry with 18- to 35-year-olds for some time.  Young adults have talents and passion, yet often struggle with finding a consistent way to channel their gifts.  Not all UU congregations are as skillful as this one at helping individual people to let their light shine, so 18- to 35-year-olds often find that the place they feel most at home is with their peers.

When UU Young Adults worship, they usually sit in a circle to gather strength from each other face-to-face.  There are often candles, as many as possible.  I can picture each person lighting a flame, re-lighting a friend’s candle without being asked, sharing something personal and meaningful with each spark.  UU Young Adults are among those whose flames get hit with more than their fair share of wind and rain.  When we maintain a place for people to gather together, we make it more likely that someone will be there to rekindle the spirit of a person whose lamp has gone out.  That’s why everyone’s participation and leadership is so important in a UU congregation.  Together, we make a circle for rekindling.

A little later, we’re going to sing a line from “Gather the Spirit” (by UU singer/songwriter Jim Scott) that has some relevance here.  “Our separate fires will kindle one flame.”  Each one of us brings individual passions, our own spark that animates a life of being and doing.  I’m suggesting that we bring those together.  Accepting a spark from someone else is part of interdependence.  Working with and through the congregation doesn’t diminish the meaning or the impact of our separate fires, it creates more warmth and illumination, and it supplies fuel to prevent burnout.  Share fire and fuel.

Rekindle the Spark for Others

I’ve spoken so far about accepting a spark and being in community as we carry that spark forward.  Before I close, let’s consider different ways to rekindle the spark in another person.  There are sparks that we don’t even know we’re sharing at the time, displaying moments of kindness or inspiring others just by shining our own light.  We can pass the torch with in-depth mentorship or apprenticeship.  We can let the ember fly and pick up a different candle, realizing that we may have already passed the flame to a new person without recognizing its new form. 

I have been the recipient of many accidental sparks.  I would like to tell you about just one.  Several years ago when I lived in California, I was at the State Capitol in Sacramento to talk with legislators about health care reform.  At the time, the passion I carried for health care reform was mixed with a strong flavor of anger.  It was a lobby day sort of event, organized by a coalition of organizations with similar goals.  There wasn’t anyone else from my group at the event, so I was paired with another solitary advocate. 

I didn’t realize that my partner for the day was the inspirational equivalent of the Human Torch.  She was the legislative director for an association of senior women.  I’ll call her Dorothy.  Dorothy was a pro.  After bagels and a few words meant to rally the troops, the advocates all split up into their separate teams for legislative visits.  Dorothy said, “The first thing we do is get the latest copy of the bill.”  We hadn’t covered that in the rally.  Dorothy took me to the office in the basement where anybody could get a copy of an active piece of legislation, one per day.  She had a gentle way about her.  She didn’t rush, but she made her way around the Capitol building with the confidence of someone who knows the territory.  She had a smile for everyone. 

In every office we visited, somebody knew Dorothy.  I particularly remember the short wait before being ushered into the office of one legislator’s Chief of Staff.  I had been on lobby days before for health care and other issues.  You don’t always get to see someone, even if you called ahead.  Dorothy held his complete attention.  He looked closely at the materials she presented.  I felt anxious to add something to the conversation.  I mentioned that the high cost of health insurance plans made it difficult for small nonprofits to give a fair package of benefits to their employees.  The staff member listened, but quickly noted that small nonprofits already get tax exemptions.  He turned back to Dorothy to find out more about what she thought. 

I understood then that Dorothy’s way of grace and patience, not to mention legislative savvy, was getting her further than the salt and vinegar that I brought.  It seemed that the best use of my time that day was going to be to listen and learn.  On the way to the next legislator’s office, I asked her about her association and how long she had been doing the work.  For at least a decade, she had been the main representative of her organization at the Capitol, staying in contact with chapters all over the state.  The association suggested legislation, down to the wording, and collected information to make their case.  They had a few issues that were their clear priority because of the way they affected older women, yet had also spoken up for issues that might seem tangential, such as Marriage Equality.  In short, Dorothy got stuff done. 

I could sympathize a little with Raniero di Raniero in that moment, having to slow down from a gallop.  Like Raniero, I had to let go of the image of myself as a tough person in order to move forward on the toughest task.  Dorothy was just going about a normal day, being graceful and kind and unstoppable.  She gave me the privilege of traveling with her.  She probably doesn’t know what a profound impact she made on my attitude as a citizen and an advocate.  May we all endeavor to give off such sparks.

Sometimes the transmission is more intentional, when one person takes on another person for an apprenticeship or a mentorship.  Clara Barton found that with her friend Frances Dana Gage, and I think there was an element of mentorship from Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Women’s suffrage in the United States was a cause passed down from one generation to the next for 144 years.  Abigail Adams asked her husband to “remember the ladies” in 1776.  From Lucretia Mott to Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Lucy Stone to Olympia Brown, activists throughout the 1800’s formed bonds of friendship, mentorship, and encouragement that helped the dream survive past individual activists.  Of all the movers and shakers from this period, only Olympia Brown lived long enough to cast a vote after the 19th Amendment was passed.  Passing the torch can keep a spark going for a long time. 

Again, religious communities can be great environments for sustainability.  Exemplars from the past and companions in the present remind us that we are not alone.  Current and younger generations extend that companionship and hope into the future.  I won’t promise that all of the ideas we hold dear at the moment will be transmitted unchanged to the Unitarian Universalists of fifty years from now.  I am confident that there will be Unitarian Universalists fifty years from now, carrying many of the same values, and I believe this congregation will continue to be a thriving part of that movement.  The sacred flame we have brought this far will be passed from one candle to the next, dancing differently in response to the winds of each epoch.  When we practice passing the torch, looking toward the future can give us energy to shine brightly in the here and now. 

Sometimes we pass the torch just because it’s time for that flame to move on, not because the torchbearer is going anywhere.  In order to honor the new sparks that come into our lives, and to give a different shape to the ideas we have been holding in stewardship, we put one candle down and pick up a different one.  Legend has it that Raniero di Raniero stayed in Florence and raised a family that became important in the civic life of the city.  Once the sacred flame had passed to the candles on the altar in the cathedral, he let them go.  The story would be different if he spent the rest of his life hovering over those candles, standing in one place.  He entrusted them into someone else’s care.  So it is with us.  Some sparks are meant to be carried for a limited time.  Knowing that can help us to focus, to be generous with warmth for as long as the mission calls us. 

There are many ways to rekindle the spark in another person.  If you know the time has come to entrust fire to someone else, put down the candle.  Know that it may rekindle a lamp in a surprising way.  Cultivate apprenticeships and mentorships so that you can pass the torch when you are called to do something else.  Be yourself, and know that shining brightly may rekindle the light in another person when you least expect it. 

Honor the spark.  Share fire and fuel in community.  Rekindle the fire for other people.  This is how we gather warmth and illumination for ourselves and our future.

The Sacred Flame

From Christ Legends by Selma Lagerlöf, Translated by Velma Swanston Howard
Adapted by Doug Kraft and Lyn Cox

I don’t know if the story happened exactly this way, but I believe it’s true.

A long time ago, at the turn of the twelfth century in Florence, Italy, there was a knight named Raniero di Raniero.  He was known as a strong and brave soldier.  Unfortunately, he never missed an opportunity to prove his strength and bravery.  As soon as he heard any noise in the street, he would rush outside, in hopes that a fight had arisen in which he might participate.  He vowed that, wherever he went in battle, he would bring the best and rarest things back to the cathedral in Florence.  He didn’t do this because he was religious, but to display his valor where everyone could see.

Sitting in church, Raniero heard a sermon about the crusade in Jerusalem.  Finally!  A worthy challenge to prove his might.  These days, many people look back on the Crusades and think they weren’t such a good idea, but Raniero was excited. His wife, Francesca, knew that Jerusalem was a long way away, so Raniero and his boastful ways would be gone a long time.  Although she was kind, she realized she would not miss him   

The crusaders went to the Middle East and fought the people who lived there.  Their biggest battle was in Jerusalem, which is a holy city for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  The Christian crusaders won that day.  That night, there was a ceremony in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, near the tomb where Jesus was placed after he died.  Each knight was allowed to approach the tomb and to light a single candle with the flame that always burned there.

Raniero realized that the most precious treasure he could bring back to the cathedral in Florence was not gold or jewels or sacred relics, but the living flame.  What could be more valuable to the church than a candle lit by the flame at Jesus’ tomb?  Raniero decided to do this all by himself, with no help from anyone, so that he could show his bravery and prove that the whole thing was his idea.  His compatriots laughed at him, which only made Raniero more determined.

Early the next morning, with shining armor and enough tapers to keep the flame alive for months, he galloped proudly from the camp.  The first thing he learned was that he could not gallop with a lighted candle.  Speed nearly blew it out.  Yet the light that could be extinguished in the wind burned bright and strong in the stillness. 

The journey would require patience.  Raniero, who had never concerned himself with anyone’s needs but his own, had to attend carefully to the flame.  He had to choose everything he did based on the candle.  Thus he traveled – slowly – week after week through the wilderness.     

One day he came upon five poor bandits preparing to ambush him. He drew his sword to teach them a lesson. Then he realized that, although the five would be no match for him in a fight, the flame would probably not survive the scuffle. He would then have to travel all the way back to Jerusalem and the mocking of his fellow knights or return to Florence without the treasure be had vowed to bring. He sheathed his sword and walked into their midst. “Take from me what you must,” he said to them, “but do not disturb the candle.”

Amazed and amused, they stripped him of all he possessed.   They took his money, his armor, and his fine horse.  True to the agreement, they left the flame and the extra tapers alone.  As they were about to ride off, the leader of the band took pity on him and gave him an old robe and an equally worn-out horse. Stripped of all outward vanity, he traveled on.  For months, he kept the flame alive in snow and rain and wind.

Raniero finally arrived in Italy.  One day he rode through lonely roads up among the mountains.  A woman came running after him and begged him to give her a light from his candle. “The fire in my hut is out.  My children are hungry.  Give me a light that I may heat my oven and bake bread for them!”

Raniero held back the candle at first.  He did not wish that anything should be lit by the flame except candles for the church.

Then the woman said to him, “Pilgrim, give me a light, for the life of my children is the flame which I am in duty bound to keep burning”

With this he could not argue. He allowed her to use the flame.

Several hours later, he rode into a town.  Just by accident, someone there extinguished the candle.

Raniero felt the pangs of failure. What could he do?
Then he remembered the woman who had borrowed the light.  Her fire was the same fire he had brought from Jerusalem! He ran back to her door. Yes, her fire was still burning. His quest was not lost. For the first time, genuine gratitude entered his heart. Because he had given the flame away, he had saved it!

The journey had many other trials and lessons. By the time he reached the countryside around Florence, he didn’t care anymore about knighthood or glory.  All he cared about was completing his mission, to bring the living flame to the cathedral. 

As he entered the city, a crowd began to form around him.  With his humble robe, patient expression, and slow horse, nobody recognized Raniero.  They made fun of him, calling him “Pazzo, Pazzo,” which means “madman.”  They called out “Put out his light!  Put out his light!”  People climbed over each other to reach for the candle.  Raniero held the candle up high.  A woman leaned from a balcony and snatched the candle from him.  Brokenhearted, Raniero fell to the street unconscious.  The crowd moved on.

When Raniero opened his eyes, he saw his wife Francesca standing over him.  She of all the people had recognized him.  “Here is your candle.  I snatched it from you, as I saw how anxious you were to keep it burning.  I knew of no other way to help you.”  Once again love saved the flame. 

Together they took the candle to the church.  When the service was over, a priest recounted Raniero’s journey.  Some people did not believe Raniero capable of such a gentle task.  What proof was there of his story?  His old enemies did not want to let him light the candles on the altar, they were so sure he was lying.  The congregation argued.

Just when Raniero thought that his whole journey was for nothing, a bird flew into the church, picked up the flame, and lit the candles on the altar.  All the people in the church, both Raniero’s friends and his enemies, abandoned their doubts.

Raniero’s story became a legend in Florence.  The people there called him Pazzo degli Ranieri.  It is said that there was a custom in Florence to celebrate Easter Eve by letting an artificial bird fly with fire through the church. 

I don’t know if the story happened exactly that way.  What I believe is true is that the gentleness and love of humanity that Raniero learned in the story were the lasting virtues that helped people in Florence to live in happiness.