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May 4, 2003 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

May 4, 2003

Adoption and Love

Euripides the great Greek playwright of the 5th Century BCE, wrote: Here all mankind is equal: rich and poor alike, they love their children.

Rich and poor alike most people, the overwhelming majority of people, love their children. We know this true. But before the love is the longing. By all the evidence around us, it seems clear that the majority of people expect to have children, want children, but to name the truth boldly, not all who have children plan them or can keep them once they are born. Likewise, not all people chose to have children for many very good reasons. So, if one is to say nothing more or less about the issue of becoming or not becoming a parent, we must at least recognize that these units we call families are quite varied, different, unique, but the most important ingredient of the family unit is love.

Over my years of ministry I have talked with many parents, most with biological children, but also with many who have foster or adopted children. I see few differences in the basic problems, joys, and needs in any of these families, but there is no doubt that there is usually a great deal of heartache for couples who want to have children and discover they cannot. Much of this stems from our expectations set up in childhood that we will be parents when we grow up, that we will beget children, that we women will experience pregnancy. Unless we were adopted ourselves, few of us were reared to think we would not follow this pattern, or that we might chose either to not have children, or would chose to adopt. Yet, adoption is part of our lives, most of us have family members who have adopted, or we have friends who were adopted or have chosen to adopt. I have a niece who was adopted from Korea. I have some more distant relations who have been adopted as well. So we know adoption is common, and becoming more so. As with my brother’s family, who had two children prior to adoption, many families chose to adopt one or more children out of love for family.

That is what it all boils down to, that adoption, of all acts of parenting, is a special act of love. One that most times entails much more thought, planning, consideration, hope, and challenge than, dare I say it, most decisions to have children. I am almost always so impressed by the process of thought and caring goes into the decision to adopt.

It was a conversation I had with Phyllis Peacock a year or two years back that stimulated this service today. As Mothers Day and Fathers Day come up on my calendar in my summer sermon planning for the next year, I try to think of ways to talk about these holidays-assuming I chose to talk about them which I don’t always. What are the characteristics, what are the traits of good parents; equally, what are the issues of what makes for a good mother or a good father? While I had originally planned for this service to be next week on Mother’s Day, unavoidable conflicts required a switch of dates, and I regret that Phyllis could not be here today, for, as an elementary school teacher, her experience of children from all kinds of families and her own as an adoptive parent is invaluable. So I recommend Phyllis, indeed the Peacock family, as a resource if you are considering adoption yourself.

Adoption for many years was plagued by myths and assumptions, and made a difficult and expensive process, which it still is for many people. I have a bit of humor to illustrate:

          “How come the Greens have started taking French lessons?” asked one neighbor.

          “Didn’t you know their adoption plans finally came through?” said another “They’ve gotten an adorable French baby, and they want to understand what she says when she begins to talk.”

Certainly, most of us are not this dim, but we often live in clouds of assumption and ignorance, not all of which is avoidable, but one of the purposes of this religious family is to try to clear as many of the clouds away as we can. We call it growth of the mind, and we call it spiritual growth.

My belief is that we always need is to learn more about what it means to have children, become parents, and to grow families. These are each distinctly different areas of concern--to have children, become parents, and to grow families, and they come loaded with lots of baggage, paved with pitfalls, for all kinds of families.

I have not personally had the experience of adopting a child, nor have most of you here today, but that does not mean that it is not something we should care about, or be concerned about. As Dr. Mary Calderone once said: “Our children are not going to be just “our children”-- they are going to be other people’s husbands and wives and the parents of our grandchildren.” So the idea that adoption is somebody else’s issue and not our own now or at some point is likely to be erroneous. At the very least, one expects that we want to be understanding of our friends and family members who decide to become adoptive parents, and to learn enough about the issue to be wise enough to say helpful and caring things, and not hurtful things which is too often the case.

Someone asked my brother how his real children felt about his adopted daughter. My baby brother, who came into the world at a struggling and determined two pounds, fifty years ago, and grew up into a 6’2”, 220lb man who does not suffer fools gladly had a ready response. He asked in reply: “What makes you think my daughter isn’t real?”

I invited a couple of our members to speak today to offer you their viewpoints on this issue, one as a parent and one as an adoptee, and I hope in our discussion period you who have experience will also share with us your thoughts and feelings on this subject of love, which is adoption.

    [Introduce Helen Hoffman and Brian Williamson]

Mothers Day is coming up next Sunday. This is, I just learned, the biggest restaurant day of the year. As we think about mothers, how to celebrate Mothers Day, let us think about those women who are struggling to become mothers, those in the process of adoption, those who find this holiday a painful time. (And lest any forget, not all experiences of mothers or motherhood are good or celebrated, but that is another sermon.)

For so most people, and certainly most mothers and fathers, the future is children, or as Maxim Gorky wrote: Only mothers can think of the future - because they give birth to it in their children. Certainly, we know this extends to mothers and fathers, but the statement is true in as much as the future as we think of it generally is about the people, the society of tomorrow. How we treat our children, how we raise them up, is not just important, it is critical, and it is a job of the village that is our communities. And nowhere is the village more real today than in this community of faith right here, this UU Society of Mill Creek.

So be it.

 

May 18, 2003 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

May 18, 2003

Gifts of Love: Time

This is the first in a series of three sermons on the gifts of love. I chose first to talk about time, for time is the foundation of all that we hope for, dream about, strive for, and regret in the human life.

One way we understand these highly valuable aspects of human life comes to us in the form of adages, proverb, wisdom sayings, many of which relate to time. Time is explained in these metaphors and similes as money or value. They teach us that time is something we spend, save, waste, or bank; or, they relate to value in a linear fashion, as length. My mother, a fine needlewoman often prompted my brothers and I when we were dawdling over a job by saying: A stitch in time saves nine. Meaning that if you mend a tear while it is small it is a small job, but if you ignore the rip, snag, tear, it will soon require a big job of mending-if it can be mended at all.

Time as temporal is related to us in the Hebrew scriptures book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, that I read earlier, the writer (the writer is known as the preacher), is essentially a cynic if you read the whole book. He echoes his likely contemporary, the founder of Taoism, Lao Tsu who said: Every front has a back. The Ecclesiastes writer is staying in these famous lines that there is a season for everything under heaven. Good and bad, war and peace, having and losing, etc. Not until the closing lines does he say in essence: But after all, who am I to question the ways of God. I always felt this was a little bit of a cop-out, and it is possible that it was amended over time by later writers, which may account for why it made it into the canon of scriptures. The truth we recognize though is that indeed time accounts for all things under heaven.

Now these sayings, adages, proverbs get frequently restated to fit the times. The “stitch in time” does not mean much to the modern generation that does far less sewing and mending, so we need a restating from time-to-time of these succinct bits of wisdom handed down through the ages. One modern saying we hear repeatedly that incorporates several earlier adages, is this: You know what a person values by his/her calendar and checkbook. For the most part, this is true. There is a great emotional context vis-à-vis people and our time and money. Consider those things we value or resent. We tend to resent what we think is not worth our time and/or money.

I find I resent the costs related to owning a car, but not those related to having a house, with all the maintenance and repairs, that are part of homeownership. In the past eight months, my husband and I have had to replace our furnace and AC, our hot water heater just this past week, and the dishwasher in our twenty-year-old house. It was certainly inconvenient, and irritating to have our savings decimated by this whole-house appliance demise. It would have been easier to have them go one a year; still, I know that they add value to our house, they add to our comfort and safety, all of which makes it easier to accept these costly home maintenance expenses. But a car depreciates the minute you leave the dealership, and about the time you get them paid for, or in less time that it took to save up for them, they are falling apart as often as not. So, for me in general cars are black holes of expense. Certainly I see the value in having transportation, but it would be lovely to have a really wonderful system of public transportation. But, since I do not like living in cities where there is such transport, I have to take the good with the bad.

Our feelings about time relate to many things, not all well considered. We tend to see worth, value, estimation of time in our unique individual ways, which are not always consistent or purposeful and directed. We talk about quality of time, or quality time, as just as important as length/duration. I think of my own father versus many dads who these days are home far less than he was, yet the children of this age tend to get more real time of the kind we value most highly despite the parents’ commuting and great demands on their time.

My dad was a fruit grower. I spent every breakfast and supper at the same table with him, and lunch too in the summers. His work was his life, and though I was in the same space with him, he gave me very little time. He was typical of his age. He would sometimes play catch with my brothers, took them hunting and fishing, but still we knew him more by observation than interaction. In one of the rare times he really talked to me it was about this subject of time. It was a summer day, and he took me into town to the library. I was about eleven or twelve and complained about the long boring days out in the country and how I wished I were back in school already. My mother addressed these moans with: You are wishing your life away. I was. On this day as I sat beside him in the old pickup, he said with patient understanding that when I was grown up time would go by far too quickly and I would wish for this lazy summer day again. I could not see it then, but when I was in my late thirties, and certainly in the years since then, I have often recalled that day and realized the truth he was telling me, and the time he was giving me in that day. It was rare, and a precious gift.

Of course, Nancy Dean the child could not really understand what my dad was saying. In fact, for most of our lives, life as a unit of time (generally an unknown unit of time) is impossible to really understand. With age we begin to understand time in terms of speed, but while we are in our youth we tend to understand time more event-related. Often, throughout our lives, we really see time and life merely in terms of either past or future.

Newly minted as a minister in 1994, we newbies were advised by our mentors and the UUA Ministers Association to make a chart/journal of our time. Ministers tend to work 60-70 hours a week without realizing it. I often have remarked that I could not have been a minister when my children were young, because of the 3-4 evening meetings a week. I had not been here a year when I decided to try this charting of my days, for a week (I think I manage three days) and was surprised. This kind of chronicle is very revealing (like a food diary-the first time I kept one I was astonished by how much I nibbled as I cooked!) I was surprised to see that I felt like I was working more when I was working less and vice-versa. Days I spent in my office seemed less busy than days I had to drive to meetings; yet, in actually productive time, I was working several more hours. So we may not be as good at judging our use of time as we think.

I know people who claim to have no time to read, or do volunteer work, or other things they say they would like to do; yet, judging by the TV programs they mention they must watch 20-30 hours of TV a week (which, if you calculate commercials TV can be a real waste of time!). They have developed a habit that eats up many great hours of time that might be spent interacting with family and friends. It is not that TV is bad, but a family sitting looking at a TV is not engaged for the most part. So we can be more particular in how we spend this resource. There is a time for every purpose under heaven! But, not every purpose deserve a great deal of time.

Often the largest units of time, such as year/s or decades, are less significant to us than that the smaller ones, like minutes or hours. I would guess that more people regret minutes when they said or did something (or failed to) that had a disastrous result than the following months or years that we live with those events. I think of the moment when a U-turn caused a terrible car crash for my young neighbor, who has spent years in recovery and has many more yet to go.

But living with regret over the past can be time we waste. Part of the problem is that we often do not truly value time, or we misdirect the span of our days. During a very hard time in my life, I was regretting a lot of things that happened in the past, then I saw a Ziggy cartoon that stated: There is no future, spending the present, worrying about the past. I still have that cartoon block taped to my desk. It reminds me of what is really important, and I realized that I do not want to spend any more of my precious minutes on things I cannot change. I believe I learned the lessons I could, and how I have to practice them. That is the best we can do with time we view as mis-spent.

I believe that time is the greatest of the gifts of love. Consider that most people-especially our spouses/partners, and children-would rather have more of our time than our money. Both are nice, but if it comes down to foundational things, the basics, it is time that was/is devoted to us that is most meaningful. We hear sometimes about poor but happy families, viz middle- or upper-class families who are miserable. This can be cliché. Yet, it can be true that what the poor have is the hidden wealth of time. I recently saw part of TV biography about Loretta Lynn, who grew up in great poverty in Butcher Hollow, KY, to a coal miner father and mother who took care of their several children. While Loretta Lynn grew up to be a famous country-western singer, a wealthy and powerful woman, in this interview she said that for all that, the happiest time of her life was those childhood years in Butcher Hollow. Indeed, her career was a direct gift from her mother who sang to her children often, and the father who stressed the importance of family. To talk about poor but happy families may be cliché, and we would rather people did not have to experience such dire poverty, the extremes or clichés do not disavow the truth that too many of us parents throw money at our children when it is our attention they most need and want. I have noted that pets often fill this role that is unfulfilled by people. (Yet another reason we have a Blessing of the Animals next month.)

The big question meant to shake our understanding is this: You have one week left to live, what do you do? The gut level reaction or answer to this tells you what matters most. I love this congregation, and my life as a minister, but my work would not get much of my time that last week. It would be my family, my husband, children, grandchildren.

Yet another way to get hold of our relationship to time is to this: Name for yourself the best time in your life so far. How do you characterize its look, feel, texture, the reality of it? Was that time a gift? How did it come to you? My dad talking to me that summer afternoon is one of my cherished memories from my childhood.

Sometimes we give the gift to ourselves, which is the greatest gift of love to the spirit, the soul that is you. If you wait for someone to give you what you need most, it might not happen, but you can give yourself time. I have learned for myself how important a few days of retreat are for me. Not everyone needs as much solitude, but we do all need to give ourselves time in the way we most value time.

I read some months ago that grandparents can be a tremendous asset in the life of a child, mostly because grandparents really attend to the child. They often will do for their grandchildren what they regret not having done for their children. My little 22-month-old grand-daughters don’t say, give me a toy or give me money, they say: “Nana, come play now.” And, I do. Now won’t be here later.

Gifts of time come in many ways, not just heart-to-heart talks or one-on-one interactions. We teach our children the value we place on time by bringing them to services on Sunday morning, or going with them to other extracurricular activities/sports/concerts, or taking a vacation that brings the family into a special time together.

To further highlight the issue of how we feel about time, consider that any regret we feel in our lives is far less likely to be about things we did not buy or have, and far more often about time not well used, or not given.

You have, every one of us has, the power for giving time to your husband/wife/partner, to your children/other young people, your friends, yourself , your community, and to worthy people or causes. The gift of time is the biblical pearl of great price; the Xanadu of experience, the heaven of the spirit.

I have never said I wished I had not read a book. I have read books I was not all that crazy about, but reading is not something I tend to regret for I see it as a great gift to my soul/mind/well-being, and my work. Of course, I find that like all of you I have learned to not waste my time, and have learned some techniques for not reading a book or taking on a project that I see as likely to produce that kind of regret. Now, I have sometimes regretted that I read a book when I ought to have been cleaning house, or doing some other necessary activity, when I was using reading to avoid or procrastinate doing those things.

Herman Hupfield wrote these lyrics made famous in the movie Casablanca: You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, A sigh is just a sigh; The fundamental things apply, As time goes by.

Music ( and art and literature) is yet another vehicle to teach us, like proverbs and adages, that truly the fundamental things apply in life--as time goes by

Shakespeare has given us perhaps the most and the best statements regarding human understanding and value related to Time. In Shakespeare’s play, King Richard III, the king says: “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me . . .” Waste in the second sense, as in waste away, use up, age. Well, herein lies our fear.

Of all the great lines, sayings, notable quotes, a great proportion relate to time. Here are some to note:

          “Time goes, you say? Ah no! Alas, times stays, we go.” Austin Dobson

          “Time - the devourer of all things.” Ovid

          “You may delay, but Time will not.” And “Time is money.” Benjamin Franklin

          “Time: that which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.” Herbert Spencer

Here is one I really like from Jane Ace, who was being either philosophical or disgruntled when she wrote: Time wounds all heels. A good one to remember when you are having a bad interaction with some one! A play on the adage, Time heals all wounds, but the reverse has its truth, too.

Time is a gift, sometimes the only gift worth getting or giving, and so important that all others pale by comparison.

In the life of a person, or in a congregation such as ours, money without a doubt is a valuable tool without which we are limited in what and how we can do the things the members decide they want. But even if we had all the money we could image, we would be nothing without the tremendous gift of time members and friends give. A check today for twenty million dollars could in fact be the death of this community of faith. Note the word faith. One reason Mill Creek feels so warm, and is so friendly, is that we are all invested (to use that value metaphor again) in this congregation. We have given so much of our time our of our caring. After all, those who give the most of their time are usually the people who value us the most. It is only rarely that this condition of giving money not related to time spent ever happens, with the exception of poor health, or if some such debility is the cause. To give a great deal of either money or time-assuming both are plentiful--would indicate a strange disconnect, for where our money goes, so goes our time is yet another adage. But where our time is given most generously, there too is where our hearts are.

We take the bulk of our time on earth for granted. Time like good health, plenty, and joy is something we regularly taken for granted; that is, until we have little left. That is why my message to you today is to remember the fundamental things, to remember that you have a great wealth in your very existence, and you have no idea how much you have in toto/in all-few of us know even if we are handed a sentence of death. So give your time wisely, give it well, with purpose and consideration, and give it joyfully to those you care about and love. What is life, but time infused with spirit. We sing, Spirit of Life come unto me, in so doing we are singing time come unto me. Growth in the spirit comes from this revelation, that time is greatest gift of existence, the greatest gift to our present and our posterity.

Now is the time. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. Now is every day. As Ram Das taught: Be here Now. Value the Now.

So be it.

 

May 25, 2003 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

May 25, 2003

Gifts of Love: Compassion

What does it mean to be compassionate? The general response is: To be sympathetic or empathetic with others. To be kind to those less fortunate than ourselves.

The first part of the answer is correct, at least in the dictionary sense. Yet, I am puzzled that we often seem to regard those more fortunate than ourselves as needing less compassion than do we, or those less fortunate than ourselves.

If we look to the teachings of Jesus, we will not find many of those teachings that do not focus on compassion. We often associate the saying: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you with Jesus, though the Greeks said it long before and coined it the Golden Rule. It is the life and behavior of the man Jesus living among the people that makes those teachers and preachers among us focus on his compassion towards the poor, but not just the poor. As in the readings from March Borg (Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time), some of the most challenging of Jesus’ parables are those that seem to violate our sense of justice, like the parable of the vineyard owner who pays everyone the same regardless of the time worked, or the parable of the prodigal son who goes off and blows his inheritance on wine, women, and whatever, then comes home looking for mercy which his father extends to him much to the frustration and anger of the older good son who stayed at home and did what a good son was supposed to do. Indeed, as Borg points out, Jesus’ principle teaching is that God is not about an equality of punishment and reward, but wholly compassionate to all who see the error of their ways and repent and go forward in the paths we call right and good, rather than weighing humans in a balance and looking for some greater measure of good in one than another. This is a very hard teaching, especially for those of us who really need to see justice at work. That may be why we like to focus that teaching on those less fortunate than ourselves, rather than seeing compassion as something that we all need.

I wonder how many of our members here would expect me as your minister to be more compassionate to some than others? Then why expect less compassion from yourself?

This is the second in my series of three sermons on the gifts of love. Last Sunday I preached about time as a principle gift of love, now I focus on compassion, for it seems to me that of all the things that I see as human weakness in all of us, this difficulty we have with living lives of compassion is close to the top.

Just look at the war with Iraq as a case in point. When we heard reasons to either go to war or to find alternative means to take out Saddam Hussein and liberate the Iraqi people, how often did we hear either side talk about and consider compassion. Can we have, or do we still have, compassion for the Iraqi people who are now very upset with our country because they have no water, electricity, hospital/medical services, and most of the elements we consider necessities for basic living? Do we feel compassion for their fear and struggles, or for their great sadness that their country is looted of both its necessities and also its unique treasures of antiquity? I heard at the hairdressers recently a discussion between a hairstylist and a customer deriding the Iraqis for the looting and their evident lack of appreciation for our liberating them from Saddam.

Well, if compassion is at root being able to be empathetic (that is put ourselves in another’s shoes), how would you and I feel if we were thus helped? If our country suddenly had no police or military, would we be having looting, havoc in the streets? Would everyone be doing those things? Would we notice if we could not get necessary medicines for our children and ourselves? Would we be upset if we had gas lines three miles long and could not fill up our cars to go to work? Would we be upset that our loved ones were dying for want of medical help, or lack of good sanitation, or from the violence of the ruffians in our midst?

No doubt it is difficult for us to truly understand the plight of a people who have undergone the horrors of first a ruthless dictator, then a war, for none of us who grew up in this country have experienced such catastrophic living. It is a challenge for us to be as empathetic with a foreign people who are having that experience. Still, if we could claim to be good and caring/compassionate people, we ought to be able to put ourselves in the place of people who do know this reality. At least nowadays we have the television and newspapers to show us that reality in a way people of Jesus’ time did not. That is why Jesus taught in these stories called parables that were meant to be understandable to his wider audience. Actually, they may be less understandable to the audience of this age.

The great Confucian philosopher Mencius, who lived about 350 years before Jesus taught that the three “mature virtues” [of the great or good person are] “wisdom, compassion, and courage. It may be that it takes both wisdom and courage to be compassionate.

The Rev. Peter Gomes of Harvard Memorial Church, talked about the teaching of Jesus, in which he said that second greatest commandment after love of God, is to love your neighbor as yourself, in the parable of the Good Samaritan. And of course there is usually someone listening with an ear for problems in logic, here a lawyer who had listen to the story of the good Samaritan (this is like talking about the story of the good Frenchman in modern parlance), but a lawyer in the audience, as the story goes, says in response to this parable, well Jesus who is my neighbor? You have to understand this story in light of how tightly groups defined themselves, at that time in history, primarily as not everybody else. Romans were at the top of the heap in real terms, and Jews and many other groups defined themselves by origin, or religion, or nationality, and as we understand it today as chosen or preferred in some way by God. Exclusion was the norm. (We are still dealing with this issue, are we not?) So he was asking a question on the minds of many people listening. Gomes says:

          The neighbor is that person with whom we share not simply the cup of water and the crust of bread but the adventure of life itself . . . When we discover that, we will discover not only who our neighbor is, but who and whose we are.

           

Now comes the teaching by using humor, which is the compassionate way to get others to learn the lessons we want them to get:

          The self-absorbed parishioner was told by her pastor to go out in her community and do something kind for a needy person. Unable to bring herself to actually approach one of the unfortunates, the woman scribbled “Best of luck” on a hundred-dollar bill and thrust it toward the nearest hand.

          The next day she was startled when the same fellow approached his benefactor and handed her $1,000. “Nice work, lady,” he said cheerfully. “Best of Luck paid ten to one.”

Who showed the great compassion? Which brings me back to this issue of who is deserving of our kindness, our compassion. If logic follows, that we only owe our compassion to those less fortunate than ourselves, then what would be the reason for this man in the story giving back a tenth of his winnings to the well-to-do woman?

The great teacher monk, Thomas Merton, wrote that: Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.

Here is second funny story (which I actually had a version of this happen to me in my twenties):

          The harried homemaker sprang to the telephone when it rang and listened with relief to the kindly voice in her ear. "How are you, darling?" it said. "What kind of a day are you having?"

          "Oh, Mother," said the housewife, breaking into bitter tears, "I've had such a bad day. The baby won't eat, the washing machine broke down, I haven't had a chance to go shopping, and besides, I've just sprained my ankle and I have to hobble around. On top of that, the house is a mess and I'm supposed to have two couples to dinner tonight."

          The mother was shocked and was full of sympathy. "Oh, darling," she said, "sit down, relax, and close your eyes. I'll be over in half an hour. I'll do your shopping, clean up the house, and cook your dinner for you. I'll feed the baby, and I'll call a repairman I know who'll be at your house to fix the washing machine right away. Now stop crying. I'll do everything. In fact, I'll even call George at the office and tell him to come home and help out."

          "George?" said the housewife. "Who's George?"

          "Why, George! Your husband! . . . Is this 284-1367?"

          "No, it's 284-1376."

          "Oh, I'm sorry. I guess I have the wrong number."

          There was a short pause. Then the young woman asked, "Does this mean you're not coming over?"

Should the woman go over to help even though this is not her daughter? I would guess, if I did a random poll, that most people believe the older woman has no more responsibility once she realizes the young woman is not her daughter. Compassion would ask a different response.

When I was child, I used to hear people say that charity begins at home. I think that is true, but what I suspect is the that people who say that often do so to assuage their consciences about not sending money to help people in other places, and are probably not helping all that much at home either. Compassion is not so completely tied to acts of charity itself as it is to a way of thinking about acts of charity.

You and I all are besieged by many different and worthy appeals for our money. We cannot address them all, so most of us prioritize and give to those we most care about and then to those we think most deserving. Most people would like to do more than they can, but for me it is less about what we do, but how we think about what we do. That is the real test and measure of our compassion. It may also have something to do with our survival.

Southern writer, William Faulkner, wrote:

          I believe that man will not merely endure. He will prevail. [N]ot because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

This is the point. We are capable of these undeniable gifts of love: compassion and sacrifice and endurance (you might think of this as determination)). If we are capable, then what is it that turns us to these acts? Or fails to?

I think we are usually quickly turned to such acts of compassion when there is a catastrophe, a disaster, but what about in our day-to-day living. How is it that we can put aside the idea of who is or is not a stranger if a tornado comes roaring through the town demolishing everything in its path, but on a day like today, we cannot find compassion for the people sitting in different houses of worship. All around the country people are hearing messages of hate and separation, not just from easily identified hatemongers, but from ministers, from religious leaders. If people all really believe God has his eye not just on us, but even on every sparrow, how then can we hate each other? It is a wide divide that separates disagreement (which is a legitimate exercise) from hate and exclusion.

Still, all this is general enough for us to think a lack of compassion is not about you or me. What is it that compassion really means to most of us? Husbands, wives, partners, children, neighbors, are struggling everyday to extend a compassionate word to each other. We may be capable of great compassion and sacrifice for these very people we love, but we are also capable of ignoring their needs, their pain, their struggle. I watched a movie recently in which the husband and wife, both troubled and struggling to make the marriage work, would play this game called: “If you love me.” And they would enumerate the things they wanted the other to do to show if s/he loved the other. The problem with this game, and it is a game most of us play, the problem is that the premise is wrong. If you love me, you will do this, that, or the other. If we live out of our compassion, the game would be stated: If I love you-I will do this thing or that thing. We are so self-centered! We live out of ego-centrism. Evil arises out of extreme self-centeredness, out of extreme ego-centrism. If you love me you will: come home on time; take out the garbage; buy me a fancy car or diamond ring; let me do what I want without worrying about what anyone else wants. If you are a good boss you will: pay me more, ask me to work less, give me more time off. If you are a good child you will obey me unquestioningly at all times.

Are you willing to admit to yourself what your If you love me is? Writing this sermon I was haunted by mine.

Consider the dramatic difference to start from the premise of compassion to say: If I care about you I will do . . . . If I care about my friend or neighbor, I will do . . . If I care about the people of Iraq, or the Congo, or Russia, or France, I will do . . .

This is not to say you and I do not deserve to consider what we would like or want, but I believe if we start from the If I care position, we will learn to know best what we truly need and want.

There is a story I read about an old Cherokee man who is telling his granddaughter about a fight that is going on inside himself. He said it is between two wolves. One wolf is evil: Anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other wolf is good: Joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.

The granddaughter thinks about it for a minute and then asks her grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"

The old grandfather replies, "The one I feed."

To live a good life has everything to do with what we feed in ourselves. I am not talking about us achieving perfection, being perfect people, but rather about how we get closer to being the kind of people we like, and hopefully want to be.

Compassion is about love that takes us from the center of the circle and places us one of those who form the circle. Whether that circle be the circle of family, neighbors, local community, religious community, and all the wider communities that make up the world.

The holy leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama teaches: The whole purpose of religion is to facilitate love and compassion, patience, tolerance, humility, forgiveness.

Both Jesus and the Dalai Lama, and all truly great spiritual leaders are saying the same thing, which is that God, or the Spirit of Life--however the higher power or ultimate reality is understood-looks upon each of us with the same eye of compassion. Looks to each of us to live out our best selves, to resist the call of self-serving egotism, and live with and for others so that we all can live in the best possible way.

To live out of love in the way of compassion is not to expect that the world will be all perfect and wonderful as a result. None of us are that Pollyanna-oriented. That is not the point. To expect that kind of result is an If you love me attitude. An If I love you attitude has only one source of expectation and result-which actually simplifies life a lot-and that is the I will. We will always be better off acting from a compassionate heart and mind. If from the I love you/care for you means that one will treat others with respect and dignity, with presumption of good, innocence, reasonableness, with hope, and help, to which most people, overwhelming, most people respond positively in return.

Compassion is the ultimate and most meaningful embodiment of emotional maturity. It is through compassion that a person achieves the highest peak and deepest reach in his or her search for self-fulfillment. (A. Jersild)

Compassion is what we are called to do as people of faith, as Unitarian believers in the worth and dignity of every person as our first place to begin in interacting with other people. Sometimes a person will challenge me about our UU First Principle. After all, they say, some people don’t deserve to be treated with dignity if they abuse, or murder, or do any number of evil things. That is not what the principle states, any more to love your neighbor as yourself means you would accept those actions of such people. What they mean, the First Principle and the Golden Rule, is that this is where we begin, and in fact recognize that to hold people accountable for their actions is truly living out of this principle. This is what we must do to live in community.

Compassion does not expect to always get a reward, for the fact is being compassionate is the reward. It is what Jesus was trying to teach, what the Buddha was trying to teach, what seems to constantly need to be taught from one age to the next, and from generation to generation.

As poet T.S. Eliot wrote: My beginning is my end. For us it means, to begin from love as we know it in compassion is about how you and I begin and how you end. To begin with compassion that starts with the premise that I am good and thou art good is always preferable to any other.

So be it.

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