Inner Strength for Uncertain Times

A Sermon Offered by Rev. Tim Kutzmark
September 25 , 2005 • UnitarianUniversalist Church of Reading

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The Morning Chant:

How could anyone ever tell you
You were anything less than beautiful?
How could anyone ever tell you
You were less than whole?
How could anyone fail to notice
That your loving is a miracle?
How deeply you’re connected
To my soul?

The First Reading—From “Where the Rainbow Ends” by Jamison Currier (adapted)

“I want to take a trip,” Jeff said, “a trip to India!”
“A trip to India? Why there of all places?” I replied. It was then that Jeff smiled, more wistfully than acknowledging.
“It’s someplace to just get lost, you know. It’s so spiritual.”
“ Spiritual, I asked?”
“All those religions,” he answered.
“Religions,” I had repeated as if I were an echo. “Are you becoming religious now?”
“I was never not religious,” he said. “I just never believed in God.”
“And now you do?”
“No, not really. I want to believe in something, though. I want to know what faith is like.”
“Wanting faith is probably more admirable than finding it,” I had replied, perhaps, a little too breezily.
“Surely you must believe in something?” he asked, cocking his head to one side in an agitated, cub-like manner.
“Uncertainty,” I answered. “I believe in earthquakes and hurricanes, pestilence and plague.”
“Is that why you’re so unhappy?” he asked me.
I felt, then, as a child does, watching his balloon ascend into heaven after it has slipped through his grasp.

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The Second Reading—“Try to Praise the Mutilated World” by Polish poet, essayist, and novelist Adam Zagajewsi. Translated by Renata Gorczynski

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.

You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.

Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

“Surely you must believe in something?” he asked.
“Uncertainty,” I answered.
“Is that why you’re so unhappy?” he asked me.

In a humid rush, the New York City subway screeches to a halt and the doors slide open with their metallic glide. The harried, hurried crowd surges toward the air-conditioned compartments. I find myself swept along, caught up in their forward flow. At the last moment, something inside me whispers, “Don’t get on that train.”

It is July 13th, 2005, less than one week after fours bombs blew apart Central London’s Thursday morning commute. In the time it takes for a backpack to explode, three subway trains and one bus became scenes of carnage. Fifty-six people were killed, and over seven hundred injured. And so, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that—one week later—I am uncertain as I get on that subway. I’m not proud that I look carefully at the many darker skinned people around me, and wonder. I’m not proud that I listen to the many languages being spoken around me—Arabic, Egyptian, Pakistani, and wonder. I’m not proud that I look at every dark bag and briefcase, and wonder. I closely watch people’s eyes, trying to discern what they might be thinking, or planning. All I can see are eyes staring right back at me. Had we had all been reduced to suspicious watchers? Had the cold, hard stare become the fruit of our anxiety? Were we letting the world around us freeze and harden our all too human hearts? As the subway doors slam shut, I try to remember the words of poet Adam Zagajewski. I repeat them, over and over, like a prayer: “Try to praise the mutilated world . . . You’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully . . . [But] you should praise the mutilated world . . . [praise] the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.”

Praise the gentle light that vanishes and returns.

Autumn returned this week, on Thursday to be exact. But its promise of shorter days and cooler temperatures cannot clear away the memories, the memories of our summer of uncertainty. The bombs on trains were just the beginning, weren’t they? Think of what we’ve seen in just a few short months. Civilians and military personnel continued being butchered in Iraq. Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, and Christian extremism screamed from all corners of the globe. Genocide continued unstopped in the Sudan. Iran stood by its claim for nuclear power. Israel dragged settlers from the Gaza Strip. Winds and water destroyed the Gulf Coast. Government ineptitude and disregard threatened much more. Oil prices skyrocketed. The direction of the Supreme Court came into play. Details of more US torture surfaced. The religious right chipped away at the separation of church and state. Solid science gave way to creation myths for school children. The Catholic Church prepared a witch-hunt against clergy. Marriage equality was put at risk in the Commonwealth. Another hurricane crashed in from the sea. Summer or autumn, we seem saturated in uncertainty.

And for some of us, when we look at our personal lives, we also feel uncertain: our work, our health, our finances, our families, our relationships, our children, even our church—all places we stare into the unknown. In our effort to sort through it all, some of us find ourselves wondering, “Will all this overwhelm and harden our all too human hearts?”

As Unitarian Universalists, we know something about the human heart. As Unitarian Universalists, we believe something about the human heart.

Many churches around us are quick to say that the human heart is soiled with sin. Some religions around us teach that the human heart is inherently depraved and deprived, that here is something wrong with us, something wrong within us. Many preach that Divine intervention is needed to redeem our lives. They say we must let something outside us reach down and lift up our sorry selves toward a non-human hope.

But Unitarian Universalists think differently. We believe in human agency. We believe that redemption comes from within. We believe that strength is found within. While some of us do believe in a higher power, we all believe in an inner strength that lets us reach through the uncertainty in our lives. We believe we can lift ourselves up toward a human honed hope.
It comes when we can look at ourselves and say;
it comes when we can look at each other and say;
it comes when we can look at the stranger on the train and say:

How could anyone ever tell you
You were anything less than beautiful?
How could anyone ever tell you
You were less than whole?
How could anyone fail to notice
That your loving is a miracle?
How deeply you’re connected
To my soul?

Now, let’s not be naïve. We know ourselves. We know each other. We know the world. We know the horrors that humanity has wrought; we can read it in our history books, we can see it in our headlines and we can watch it tonight on our television screens. We know about human weakness and unskillful choices. We know what we can do to our own self in the darkness of our own room, in the darkness of our own mind. We know what we can do to others, in the streets, in the boardroom, in the Senate chamber, in the battlefield, in the camps, in the interrogation rooms. We know what happens personally—we know what happens globally—when we forget who and what we are.

But, when we remember, we also know what we are capable of. We have faced the hard night, the long illness, and the deep despair. We have had the moments when we’ve felt something greater than our own failure or suffering. We have seen glimpses beyond the differences and divisions, glimpses of a hidden wholeness between all peoples, a hidden wholeness within all creation.

So hope, writes Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, hope for a great sea-change . . .
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells . . .
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

For hope to rise, for a new history, we must believe in more than uncertainty.

Terry Dobson tells this oft-repeated story of a train and a choice in an uncertain time:

“The train clanked and rattled through the suburbs of Tokyo on a drowsy spring afternoon. At one station the doors opened, and suddenly the quiet was shattered by a man bellowing violent curses. The man staggered into our car. He wore laborer’s clothing and was big, drunk, and dirty. Screaming, he swung at a woman holding a baby. The blow sent her spinning into the laps of an elderly couple. It was a miracle that the baby was unharmed.

This so enraged the drunk that he grabbed the metal pole in the center of the car and tried to wrench it out. One of his hands was cut and bleeding.

I was young then, some 20 years ago, and in pretty good shape. I’d been putting in a solid eight hours of Aikido training nearly every day for the past three years. I thought I was tough. “People are in danger!” I said to myself as I got to my feet. “If I don’t do something fast, somebody will probably get hurt.”

Seeing me stand up, the drunk recognized a chance to focus his rage. “A foreigner!” he roared. “You need a lesson in Japanese manners!”

I gave him a slow look of disgust and dismissal. I planned to take this turkey apart, but he had to make the first move.

He gathered himself for a rush at me.

A fraction of a second before he could move, someone shouted, “Hey!”

We both stared down at a little old Japanese man. He must have been well into his seventies, this tiny gentleman, sitting there immaculate in his kimono. He beamed delightedly at the laborer.

“C’mere,” the old man said, beckoning. “C’mere and talk to me.”

The big man followed as if on a string. He planted his feet belligerently in front of the old gentleman and roared, “Why the hell should I talk to you?”

The old man continued to beam at the laborer. “What’cha been drinkin’?” he asked. “I’ve been drinkin’ sake,” the laborer bellowed back, “and it’s none of your business!”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” the old man said, “absolutely wonderful! You see, I love sake, too. Every night, me and my wife (she’s 76, you know), we warm up a little bottle of sake and take it out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench. We watch the sun go down, and we look to see how our persimmon tree is doing. My great-grandfather planted that tree, and we worry about whether it will recover from those ice storms we had last winter.” He looked up at the laborer, eyes twinkling.

As he struggled to follow the old man, his face began to soften. His fists slowly unclenched. “Yea,” he said, “I love persimmons, too . . .”

“Yes” said the old man, smiling, “and I’m sure you have a wonderful wife.”

“No,” replied the laborer. “My wife died.” The big man began to sob. “I don’t got no wife, I don’t got no home, I don’t got no job. I’m so ashamed of myself.” Tears rolled down his cheeks, a spasm of despair rippled through his body.

The train arrived at my stop. As the doors opened, I turned my head for one last look. The laborer was sprawled on the seat with his head in the old man’s lap. The old man was softly stroking the filthy, matted hair.” (“Another Way,” from Chicken Soup for the Soul, p. 55-58)

We must believe in more than uncertainty. We must praise, we must protect, we must transform our mutilated world. This is true inner strength for uncertain times: the strength to risk reaching out; the strength to risk listening, hearing, holding, and understanding. This is true inner strength for uncertain times: the strength to risk being heard, to risk being held, to risk being helped; to risk to letting ourselves be vulnerable, to be the one in need of understanding. This is what it means to be religious. This is faith.

Dennis Brutus writes:
Somehow we survive, and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither. Investigating searchlights rake our naked unprotected contours . . .But somehow we survive . . . Patrols uncoil along the asphalt dark, hissing their menace to our lives . . all our land is scarred with terror . . . .but somehow tenderness survives.

Somehow, tenderness survives.

May it be so. Blessed Be. Amen.

Copyright 2005 Rev. Tim Kutzmark