September 2005 Sermons

• 9/4 Sermon -- 
• 9/11 Sermon -- The Spirit of Homecoming
• 9/18 Sermon -- Healthy Heart, Heart Healing
• 9/25 Sermon -- 

September 11, 2005 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

September 11, 2005

The Spirit of Homecoming

This is always a special and emotional Sunday as we gather each year in formal recognition of homecoming and gathering to do the work of the heart-mind-spirit. Returning again to the daily round, the reminder that it is good to have routine, to be in a settled pace of doing all the stuff that makes for one’s on-going life.

Certainly, in terms of the Mill Creek congregation’s fiscal management, our new year begins on July 1, but it is this Sunday that marks the real understanding of the new year for us. No doubt this is in large measure because we are so attuned to the school calendar of our own childhoods, and remain attached to it as our own children and the children of this congregation start another school year. My own life has been so governed by this calendar that I hardly know what day is what during vacation times.

My daughter called me this past week to report on the first week of Montessori pre-school for my twin granddaughters, Haley and Morgan, now aged four. In their new school they have what are purposefully called “lessons,” and the children move from one lesson to another at their own pace. Morgan is generally known in the family as the pokey one (in contrast to Haley who has not stopped moving since she first started in the womb). Morgan needs more sleep, is slow to put on her shoes, takes an hour to eat half a bowl of cereal, and so on; so, my daughter was more than surprised to hear from Morgan’s teacher that Morgan kept asking for “more lessons.” And, she was doing them all very well. When Morgan talked to me she said, “Now I get lessons at school. On tomorrow I get to have more lessons.” When I asked her if she liked lessons she said confidently, “Nana, everybody likes lessons.”

Naturally, this Nana did not contradict that very happy estimate of humanity, but it did make me think that if we want them, that is, if we do not feel we are being forced to learn something, most people really do like lessons. And, that my real job is to keeping giving lessons to all you bright and inquiring minds who keep asking for more lessons, not just of me, but of each other and of life in general.

What is more, home is about lessons. The place where we first learn is at home, at our parents’ or guardians’ knees, when all the world is first opened to us.

Here, in our faith home, we also come to learn more about our own selves, we may call that self-of-self the soul, spirit, mind, being, whatever works in your theology, but to me it is all one; and, for those who see themselves as seekers, the need to constantly restore, refresh, reenergize that spirit is paramount. The truth is, we need the lessons of life all our lives. It is the stuff of personal growth. That we need lessons is not always obvious, though. But we are getting lessons in one way or another in all that we are hearing, but more importantly in what we are concluding from what we hear. I heard something on a BBC program in the wee hours this morning with which I vehemently disagreed, but in that was a lesson, perhaps several lessons. For we learn what matters to us, what we believe deeply, what we cherish, as so forth.

The prime lesson, though, is that we do not learn in isolation. We need others, perhaps not physically present, but learning is in all ways a two-way process. An exchange; and we first learn that process of exchange at the home of our childhood, and continue it in each part of the learning we do throughout our lives.

The Rev. Dana McLean Greeley whose distinguished career brought two homes together in the uniting, in 1961, of the Unitarian and Universalist denominations into our one body the Unitarian Universalist Association. He said in his first sermon to what was his last congregation at the First Parish Church in Concord, MA, speaking of the family that is the congregation:

I look to the communion that we shall celebrate in this sanctuary, and around the table in the parish hall, and in our homes . . . our union and dedication and varied participation, as members one of another. That is what is needed in a family, and it is what we hope to achieve someday in the family of [humanity], and it is the very essence of the church. We shall sing together, and we shall learn together, and we shall work together.

Homecoming is not always a wonderful event; that is also a lesson that must be learned by everyone. Sometimes, we are coming home for a funeral, or realizing that the home, the physical home is no more-perhaps one of the more painful of all lessons. My heart aches for all those people in the Gulf States whose homes, some of them very old homes that have housed many generations of a family, that those homes have been washed away. I heard on a National Public Radio news program one man’s estimate of all this; a man who had been fortunate to get his family out of New Orleans safely, and he talked about going back to find that his house had been looted of what he rightly called “trivial electronic items,” but that his joy lay in seeing his home was intact. The old home place survived.

Homecoming when it is wonderful is about returning to the source. The source of love, nurture, acceptance, warmth, food that is never quite the same anywhere else-be it good or bad, and all the lessons of one’s emerging life we call childhood. That may be one place or many places, but there is an essence of place we each connect with our childhood home.

This is also true of school, sometimes even more true of school, which is why some people remain so active in alumni/ae associations, because there is something of the home there. After all, we call the school alma mater, which mean nurturing or nourishing mother. The word church is from the Greek and meant originally as it still does, an assembly or congregation, a place of meeting.

Our assembling here on a Sunday dedicated to homecoming, a tradition that is old in our Unitarian history, is about return to something we hold dear. This place is not created by some higher up body in a huge bureaucratic organization that determined this congregation should be here; no, this place was created by you, the members who decided that this is what you wanted. That this should be your legacy to your faith, and to the future. You are the ones who created this home for our free faith, that all the people who wanted this place to seek, to learn, and to grow should have it, and have it ever to return to; and you who sustain it, keep it viable for this family as we are now, and for those to come. You are the creators of this home, and the ones who each year make this homecoming so precious.

While part of that understanding of home resides physically in the building, we also had it for fourteen years before we got a home of our own, and we had an ingathering Sunday every year, too. We know, also, that if Nature presents a storm that this building cannot survive, we who are the real UU Society of Mill Creek will build it again, just as people who sustain the temples, mosques, synagogues, meetinghouse, and churches through the Gulf states region that were destroyed will re-gather and rebuild somewhere.

For the essence of homecoming, the spirit of homecoming, is first and foremost in our hearts and minds. It is the need to belong to a place that is ours in world that is fractious at best, warring at worst, and always troubled.

We all have the lessons of home in our hearts, and lessons to teach to those who would gather with us. This is a shared experience here, not just the purview of this minister. We have gathered to lift up and support each other, and to reach beyond these walls to support those in need beyond.

As our children are taught in their religious education classes, we gather here with open hearts, open minds, open hands in order to live our principles, to give of our gifts, to put voice to what worries, confuses, and troubles us; and to give voice to that which is awesome, beautiful, and wonderful.

May this new Mill Creek year of gathering be filled with all that we can bring to it. Imbuing this place with our spirit, our presence, our knowledge, our faith, but most especially our love.

Welcome home. Blessed be, amen.

September 18, 2005 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

September 18, 2005

Healthy Heart, Heart Healing

There are times in each of our lives when we are pulled up short by death. Not all death, for there is death to be wished for, especially when someone is suffering. The deaths, though, of those people we believe have yet a lot a of life that could be shared with their families and friends, a lot they could give to the world of their creative being--these are the deaths that shake us. I have had three good friends die of heart attacks in their forties, one a woman; three very bright and gentle people, with families who loved and needed them. In each case, we all felt keenly the great waste of such death. Just at the peak of their lives, they were taken from us.

In the last year, I have heard of a number of such deaths from heart disease from my husband and from some of you, and it set me thinking that we have never been more in danger of heart disease than now when, paradoxically, we can do more medically for all kinds of heart related issues. But the terrible irony is that many of those who will die unexpectedly from a heart attack are completely unaware that they have a problem. In fact, in many cases, the people appear fit and healthy. One fact that has always shaken me is that 50% of all first heart attacks are fatal; which means that half of the people never get a second chance at good heart health.

Of course, we are all taught to consider our family history, which is one possible indicator of our health, especially heart health, but that alone will not be a sure way to know if our hearts are in good shape. There is no one way to be certain we are free from heart disease or defect, but certainly a thorough physical is important for all of us every two or three years.

Further, we all know the prescription for healthy living: eat right, exercise, and find pleasure in life. Seems simple enough; but, if so, why do we find it so difficult to do these things consistently?

There is a man my husband Tom taught to fly some years ago, who is in his 40s and who can no longer fly except with another pilot. He is at least a hundred pounds overweight, and recently said: If I don’t do something about this weight, I’ll be dead in five years.

This man is a PhD biological scientist, a person who knows how the body works, how the bio-chemical nature of the body works, far better than most people. Still, he is in this predicament. He is married to a lean, active woman who tries to encourage him in good habits, but ultimately neither she nor anyone else can help him. He has to help himself. So why doesn’t he?

I speak as one who is challenged daily to keep my calories within the narrow band I must to keep my weight in check, and I know how physically and emotionally challenging this is especially in this day and age. It is hard, it takes constant vigilance, for we are surrounded by food, and mainly horrible food from the heart standpoint-fast food, on every corner. There are usually at least seven commercials in each of the many commercial breaks on television, and generally about half of those are for junk food. We have food events, food provided to begin meetings (donuts and muffins), food that is fat-laden, calorie dense, and nutritionally weak, at every work luncheon, and every entertainment venue.

We are now experiencing nothing less than a national disaster. Sixty percent of our population is overweight in this country, and thirty percent are obese, with an ever growing number of our children getting fatter and less fit every year.

Then, to add insult to injury, we have made making time for exercise a requirement, since we have so little we actually have to do to move nowadays. We drive everywhere; have remote control devices so we don’t even have to move from couch to TV to change channels. We rarely have to move very far within or around our homes and work places. Yet, only about twenty percent of Americans exercise regularly-that is, 4-6 times a week for at least thirty minutes per time.

What could be more frustrating than what we have done to ourselves? We who evolved with bodies designed to eat everything in sight when it was available, because there would be long times when there would be no food; now have food everywhere, not your small, low sugar fruits, seeds, and nuts of nature, but large portioned, calorie dense, highly-refined with sugar and fat, all so appealing designed, and it is rare for anyone in this country to not have a lot of the worst kind of food. (I am not talking about anywhere but the western world) And, after all, why did we make all these labor-saving conveniences? Because, we don’t want to have to move any more than absolutely necessary-also a gift from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

We are quite literally between Scylla and Charybdis, between a rock and a hard place, fighting evolution’s strong hold over us with all the wrong tools.

Everyone knows what must be done, but doing it is what takes not just intelligence, but spiritual strength. How do we go about healing ourselves from the inside out, so that we can achieve both physical and mental health? That is not just a question for the medical professionals; indeed, I just heard that a doctor got sued for telling a patient she was too fat. What kind of idiot gets mad at the messenger? Even if that doctor was rude, arrogant, and had any other bad manners he might have been guilt of, is he not obligated to try to get his patient to see the truth, even if s/he does not want to hear it?

My ministry takes me frequently to nursing homes and hospitals, to the bedsides of those who are ill from all kinds of things. No sane person wants to be unhealthy or sick-at least we would assume that, but the problem is that we human beings are exceedingly good at rationalization in the moment. And what is life but one moment following the next.

We say: I won’t go for my walk today, it’s too hot, I’ll go tomorrow. Just this once, I’ll eat this cake. Tomorrow I’ll go on a diet. We have more rationalizations than good sense.

But the spiritual implications for our rationalizing away our health, is that we have very short lives. Between birth and death is but a tiny portion of life that is ours. For some, as for those dear, departed friends I mentioned earlier, the span will be far less still. Some of us gathered here this morning may not be alive a year or two from now-this is an all too safe bet.

My friends, I am not here to rain on your parade, that is not my mission or ministry, but to remind you that, even as the Hebrew scripture teaches, life is short; it is precisely because each life is so short that you and I want to make the most of the life we were given.

Naturally, the whole body is affected by our unhealthy lifestyles. All forms of cancer and heart disease have multiplied dramatically in the last hundred years. The things that used to kill people off early were infection that antibiotics readily cured, and dangerous occupations. But most of what is killing us off today, we are doing to ourselves. It is a sad truth of modernity.

But remember, the truth sets us free. And acknowledging the truth of our predicament has the ability to free us from the spiritual malaise that unhealthy behaviors also leave behind.

In the Hebrew scriptures/Old Testament, it says in Proverbs 17:22: A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.

To continually be downcast because we are unhealthy by our own hand will eventually dry up the bones, but first, in this life, it dries up the soul. It is my belief that the only way we counter the physical health issues that confront us daily, in whatever form they may present themselves, is by first dealing with the mind, or the part of the mind we see as centered in the heart-the emotional part of our being.

The body goes where the mind leads, is the saying, which is the very reason why for thousands of years religious mystics have seen the physical as evidence of the mental. To fast was to demonstrate the mind’s dominance, and to purify by removing the physical demands from the daily equation. Yoga is another form of putting the mind and physicality in harmony. Indeed any exercise does this. My daily four mile walks began in 1982 to heal my body, but have continued because they help me as my daily meditation-the mind benefits more in my opinion.

Tom’s friend I mentioned earlier may finally be on the cusp of real heart healing, because in acknowledging the truth of his condition he may now be willing to do what must be done if he is to regain hope for a healthy life.

None of us has any guarantees of a long life, no matter how well we take care of our physical and mental health. The old death “truck” is always a possibility, but that is all it is, a possibility. And a possibility should never have more significance in our thinking than actuality. The actuality, the truth, is that we will live better, more productive, and happier lives if we do a reasonable job of taking care of our health. Everyone knows this. So where is the disconnect? It must be a “do as I say, not as I do” issue.

I remember some nine or ten years ago, my weight had begun to climb. During this time I had one of my rare visits back home, and I was surrounded by my mother and her two sisters, all telling me what I should do to lose weight, and not a one of them was thinner than I! Recognizing that my over-eating had been in part due to emotional challenges I had been facing, and in reaction to them acting as a further impetus, I began to eat less, exercise harder, and visit a counselor, not surprisingly, my weight began come down rather dramatically. One thing that was quite surprising for me was that some people, who would never have said anything to me about being overweight, began telling me I was losing too much weight. I had to ask myself where that was coming from, but in general I believe it was genuine concern. But if we are going to be concerned, should we not be concerned for the more serious problem?

This whole thing did remind me of a church bulletin blurb one of you sent me which said: Due to the minister's illness, Wednesday healing services will be discontinued until further notice.

The idea of life, the idea of a healthy life, with a strong body, heart, mind, seems like it ought to be something we do not have to worry about. That it ought to just be. There is no doubt that for many of us it seems a terrible injustice that we must struggle with precisely the thing that would have enabled our survival ten thousand years ago.

I just remember Lao Tzu: Every front has a back. If I have to face either feast or famine, I choose feast. For at least with plenty, we have a choice. Those people in the world, and there are far too many of them, that face famine at this moment, would gladly trade places; not so us with them.

We do have choices about how we will live our lives. Not just the physical, but the mental and emotional. But to have the best quality of life, we must be willing to deal with quantity. We need to be willing to give our own bodies truth, which means time for reflection, exercise, and fun. The spirit does not grow without purposefulness, nor does the body heal or move toward health without purposefulness.

I have never forgotten a young man who many years ago told me that he came to Sunday services because he needed to be reminded that he wanted to be a better person. He is a successful man, with a demanding career, a family; like most of us, his is a very busy and stressful life. He has all the worries and concerns all of us here have, but he recognized that he must take care of the spirit/mind first. He also has a wonderful sense of humor, and though he now lives far from here, he takes time to send me jokes occasionally, and sent me this one:

Two neighbors met after not having seen one another for some months. "And how are things with you?" asked one of the women.

"Oh," said the other, "I'm managing all right, although I lost my husband several months back."

"What happened?" asked the friend.

"Well," explained the widow, "I was making dinner and asked him to go out to the garden and pick some corn. After he had been gone a long time, I went to see what the trouble was. There he was, dead--a heart attack."

"How awful! What did you do?"

"Oh," said the widow, "I had a can of corn in the panty, so I just used that."

One of the favorite aphorisms of ministers is: Speak the truth in love. That is, even if it is a hard truth, we should speak the truth out of love and in a loving way. That is what I always hope to do in my ministry, though it is never easy and often very painful to do. But, I also have to be willing to do that for my self, for me, to be truthful with myself about who I am, and what I am doing.

This is also your ministry to your own souls. We need good hearts, that is kindness, to be good people. Equally true, is that we need healthy hearts to be healthy people.

As Milford Graves noted in the reading, there is a rhythm in the heart that is replicated in our music, indeed in all that we do at some level. Learning to listen for the rhythms of our life as they are heard in our heart will help us to live longer, better, and with greater enjoyment.

Life is short. A very short span to give a lot of love to the world: most for our family and friends, some for our community, some for the world, and never forgetting that we need to give some love to ourselves for ourselves. This is the heart of a life well lived, and this is heart of healing.

So be it