Bridges and Beginnings:
Thoughts For A New Year

A sermon prepared by Rev. Tim Kutzmark
Sunday, January 7, 2007 • Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading

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The railroad bridge seemed to stretch out for a mile over the ravine.  It linked the sharp rocky edge of where we stood to some far away, unknown ending.  If you breathed deep, you could still smell tar, steamy and sticky, that had long ago bubbled up on the bridge’s beams, heated by the late summer sun.

The paint had faded over the last few years, but the warning was still there: “No trespassing.”  We laughed, and threw rocks at the other sign, the one proclaiming: “Do not cross.” 

No one but us kids ever came out there during the day.  At night, the teenagers would come.  We would find their beer cans, cigarette butts, even once, a pair of fruit of the loom underwear, waist size 28 inches.  But by day, that edge of that bridge was ours.  It was a great place to hide, from grown ups, and from the world that wanted us to be everything we were not. 

Shoes hung around our necks, with t-shirts tucked into the waist of our low slung shorts, we would walk a little way out onto that bridge, just out over the deep creek that ran below.  The bigger, braver boys would walk forward along one metal rail, balancing and reveling in the heat that seared dirty toes, pain proving they were more than just boys pretending to be men.  The smaller of us would cling to the sides of the bridge, holding on as we edged out over the water, cautiously reaching legs from railroad tie to railroad tie.

We always stopped a quarter of the way out.  Screaming, and yelling, “Train!” we would turn and rush back to the dirt and rocks, laughing and rolling together till it was time to return to home.  Home, that harder place, where dreams often drained away.  

No one had yet crossed that railroad bridge, no one that we knew.  None of us needed to know what waited at the far end.  We’d heard stories.  Ten years earlier the McCranksi twins got caught mid-bridge by the train.  Jimmy jumped at the last minute, landing hard on the rocks.  Kieran took the train full force on his back as he tried to out run it.  One bridge, two boys, two deaths.  We always stopped a quarter of the way out and turned back. 

But that day was different.  Something had changed.  Perhaps Nathan had been yelled at once too often by his foul-faced father.  Perhaps Christian realized that his comic books weren’t going to magically turn him into a super hero.  Perhaps Mark realized his mother wasn’t coming back.  Perhaps Terry realized that in one week he wasn’t going to live here any more.  Perhaps I realized that nothing could ever be the same again.  So that afternoon, we decided to cross over.  We would claim the other side.

We walked out to where we always stopped.  This time, no one yelled, “Train!” and retreated.  In the shadows cast by the sun, edges were blurring, and yesterday seemed done.  And then, almost as one, we stepped beyond.  We let go of something, something that was once strangely us, but now was no more. 

We were in between.  We were off balance.  We were unknown to our own selves. 

As if on cue, the breeze picked up, whipping through the wooden beams.  It tousled Terry’s hair.  He smiled.  Another gust, cooler, caused me to stop.   Christian hollered and tossed his t-shirt high above our heads, and for a moment it rode the wind out beyond the bridge.  I threw open my arms, wide, and let that same wind rush across my skin.  I shut my eyes, and arms became eagle wings.  Filled with imagination, I soared into the sky.  High on that bridge I floated beyond.  I flew into the skies of tomorrow.

And that’s how it can happen, how a day that seems so ordinary can somehow become a day of new beginning.  Those moments do not come easily.  We have to consciously claim them, create them. We have to dare them into being.  In the end, we have to choose to cross over.

Each one of us stands on the edge of such a moment.  No matter who we are, no matter how young or how old, no matter what our life circumstance.  On this first Sunday of our New Year, we each stand before our own bridge, a bridge that somehow, someway, beckons.  For some of us, that bridge is frightening or unwanted.  For others of us, that bridge is exhilarating and anticipated.  For still others of us, it is a combination of both.

What bridge calls us forward?  Is it a newborn child with new rhythms to learn, a troubled teenager we are trying to keep safe, an empty nest with no kids at all? What bridge calls us forward: a spiritual search leading us to a new church, this church?  What bridge calls us forward: a choice we might need to make, a career change, entering recovery, getting married in a month, an unexpected divorce, balancing life and relationship? What bridge calls us forward: a failure we need to move beyond, a joy we need to fully embody, watching our adult children and wishing they would make the right decisions?  What bridge calls us forward: growing older, retirement, our first grandchild, our second grandchild, great-grandparenthood, scaling down and moving into a smaller place, losing someone, loneliness? What bridge calls us forward: the failing health of a parent or our spouse, our own illness, death, finding life again? What bridge calls us forward: a church that has grown into a new way of being, a church that looks, feels and acts differently than it did just a few years ago. 

What bridge calls us forward?  What must we do to step into that place where nothing is sure, but we are closer to where life is calling us? 

Only on that bridge will we find the wings of an eagle.  Only on that bridge will we soar. Only on that bridge will we fly into the skies of tomorrow.

As D.H. Lawrence writes: “A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.  If only I let it . . . carry me!”

May it be so.  Happy New Year.  Blessed Be.  Amen.

 

©Copyright 2007 Rev. Timothy A. Kutzmark
All rights reserved.