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April 2, 2006 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

April 2, 2006

Creation Stories: In the Beginning Before there was Science

This sermon comes to you by way of Darlene Regan who bought a sermon topic at our last Service Auction in October, so this topic is the one she requested, which is the privilege of buying a topic; it is my pleasure today to pay up. I am grateful for her generous support of the congregation.

Creation stories are in and of themselves fascinating. The late scholar of myth, Joseph Campbell, spent his career studying the various ways the peoples of the world create understanding through the use of stories, myths we call them now, and noting the common themes that run through them all. While the characters and actions of the various myths, creation and otherwise, can be quite varied, there are universal threads woven among them all. No accident, really, considering they are the products of human beings; that humans are the creators is the common denominator.

In general terms, we find the creations stories, which are usually integrated into the religion of a people, have elements that relate to the places where they arise. Oceanic peoples have water as a major element, the peoples of the polar region have snow and ice as theirs, desert people the sun, and so forth. Ancient people saw creation as it related to them, where they were, how they lived, what they struggled with to survive.

There is no single creation story; there are dozens, even hundreds for many have been lost along with the peoples whose lines no longer exist. The Protestant Religious Right want Creationism taught with only one, the Genesis story. If in fact schools would teach creation stories, I for one, would see that as a valuable adjunct to the education of our young people, especially if it were coupled with a study of the religions of the world. That would be ideal. But the teaching of what is presented as Creationism or its new stage name, Intelligent Design, is about a Christian religious agenda to teach one version of one religion, fundamentalist Christianity, in the public schools. Nothing more or less.

As the judge in the recent Dover, PA case made quite clear, Creationism is one religious belief, and is clearly unrelated to science in any shape or form; his opinion is worth reading:(http://files.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/educate/ktzmllrdvr122005opn.pdf).

Creation stories as they evolved in oral cultures can be quite wonderfully presented. Others do not seem well organized to western ears, but then we have to keep in mind all this was happening long before writing and English 101 came about. Still, they tell us how people tried to answer the emerging questions of: Who are we? Why are we here? How did we get here? What is our purpose? Like parents today, they had youngsters asking questions and demanding some response. The stories that emerged most likely arose out of the way primitive people taught their young, and in the process taught themselves through the ages.

Creation stories evolved along with the evolution of humankind, in community, long before science as we understand it was created. This was the logical way of an early sentient people, to make a stab at trying to offer some way of explaining the profound questions of existence. All things considered, they were pretty good, for at root they always get at the realities for a given group of here we are, this is how we behave and why, and what we ought to do. For the most part, of those creation stories that survive, such as those in the American Native tribes, they were not then or now believed as factual in the way many fundamentalists believe Genesis is factual. Genesis for the Hebrew people was part of a great metaphorical, allegorical tradition; meaning they were saying: It might have happened like this. Some stories were clearly liked, loved, repeated and became the traditional stories; but tradition did not make them true as in meant to be actual events. This seems to be a much more modern turn of events, as people learned that belief could motivate and control people better than story. Like the belief that a man who martyrs himself for Islam will get seventy-two, or seventy-seven depending on the source, virgins waiting for him in Heaven. (I don’t know what the women get. Maybe a new broom?)

The general areas of commonality in creation stories as scholar Lindsey Murtagh gives them are: birth, mother-father, genealogy, supreme being, an active and a passive creator, creation from above and from below, diver myths, the relationship of animals and humans, an instruction: a sin and its consequence, night-fear, and fire-sin; gods create suffering.

Other scholars, one of the best know in mythic studies is Marie-Louise von Franz, categorizes myths as: creation, cosmogonic awakening, creation from above and from below, Deus Faber (God the smith/toolmaker), the first victim, subjective moods of the Creator, germs and eggs, the two- or four-fold division of the universe, abortive attempts at creation, chains of generations, particles, numbers, creation renewed and reversed.

We see quite bit of overlap in these two methods. Suffice it to say that the stories of creation come in some related packages, akin on fundamental points or underlying premises.

The areas I have chosen to speak about this morning are birth, supreme beings, diver myths, and an instruction: a sin and its consequence.

Birth creation stories sometimes happen with the appearance of an egg, and other times with a mother bearing a child or children. In some variations of the Japanese creation myth, all the churning elements of the universe was in an egg shape, a later version has Izanami give birth to children who become the sun and the moon. In Greek mythology, the bird Nyx, laid an egg which hatches the god of love, Eros, and the pieces of shell become Gaia and Uranus, the Earth and sky. Then, in the Iroquois story, Sky Woman fell from an island floating in the sky after being given a push by her husband, because she was pregnant (the old jealousy theme); because of the birth all the earth was created.

Supreme beings are in most creation stories, though the being is not always clearly identifiable. Murtagh states:

      In Greek and Japanese mythology there were many gods and goddesses; the Iroquois myth told of a Sky Woman and her sons; Aborigines placed their faith in the Father of All Spirits; the Bushmen placed theirs in Kaang and Christians and Jews in God.

      The supreme being used different methods to create the Earth. Some such as the God in the Bible and Torah merely ordered that his will be carried out and it was done. Others molded each creation by hand. Still more gods had a less powerful god to do the work for them. The supreme beings in creation myths came in many different forms and acted very differently, but they all shared in the creation of the world.

Diver myths of creation are also common and perhaps closer to the truth than they realized. Science teaches us that all the Earth was once covered in water. In diver myths, a being dives into the water to retrieve some mud/earth. The earth is brought back to the surface where it spreads into the lands of the world. There are some stories where the earth is brought back in different ways, but however the method it is from this bit of earth that the dry lands are formed. My personal favorite is the Iroquois story that the earth was born on the back of turtle. The story says Sky Woman (remember her?), when she fell the animals of the water caught her, then they dove to the bottom of the sea to get the mud, and this mud was spread on the back of turtle, then they put her onto the that land, and from there the land spread to form the continents.

The creation myth of the Japanese has a muddy ocean covering the world, and a god and goddess, Izanagi and Izanami, are curious about what was under the ocean. He took a staff and threw it into the water, and when he lifted it back, clumps of mud fell off onto the top of the ocean and these became the islands of Japan.

In the Hebrew book of Genesis, the second verse, it says the Spirit of God was moving or hovering over the face of the waters. By which, according to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, we know they believed that the Earth was once covered by water.

Many myths are related to the relationship between animals and humans, but all myths recognize our dependent connection. In many the animals were viewed as human equals; some of the Native American tribal peoples speak of a time when people and animals lived together. As Murtagh states: The roles of the animals in the myths may have reflected the feelings of the individual culture for animals. For instance, in the Sky Woman story of the Iroquois, the animals are the primary agents in saving Sky Woman, else the race would not have survived, which acknowledges how much the tribal people valued and honored and recognized their need of the animal world—and continue to in many tribal cultures.

In the African Bushman cosmology which continues in practice, the old stories say that all the creatures of the earth once lived in an underground world, peacefully, in harmony. There were no barriers of language and understanding, but later all this changed.

Another area of myth is related to sin and its consequence, and the myth is an instruction in effect. In most cases the consequence is what leads to all the pain and suffering of the world, and all the evils of the world.

Most of us are familiar with the Adam and Eve story, how God created them, gave them a garden paradise, but they had one rule, they must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Naturally, temptation in the form of serpent made them eat the fruit—which, by the way, is never named, so it could have been an apple or pomegranate. The consequence was that they would die, in addition they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and would have to henceforth toil the land to survive, and women would have the pain of childbirth.

The Greek myth of this genre is the story of Pandora who was given a box by Zeus but ordered not to open it. Zeus not only gave her the box, but he also gave her curiosity. Of course, her curiosity got the better of her, and she opened the box, thereby releasing all the troubles, pain and suffering of the world. For her sin all people would suffer. This was also the consequence for humans because the god Prometheus gave human beings fire.

It was also for the sin of fire that the African Bushmen lost their peaceful relationship with animals. They were instructed not to build a fire, but did so out of fear of the night, and then had to pay the price of living in fear as a result of their disobedience.

The Aborigines of Australia believed the Sun Mother noted that the animals, who had longed lived together peacefully, were beginning to let envy into their hearts, and had begun to quarrel. She returned to the earth hoping to make them happy, and gave them the power to change their shape into anything they chose, which would be for all eternity. This is how there came to be so many unusual animals in Australia. And because the animals had disobeyed the Sun Mother’s instruction against desiring superiority over the others, she made humans and put them over the animals, so for all time the humans would superior to them all.

In many world myths, night, fear, fire and sin are feature elements. Dark of night usually represents fear. The rising of the sun was never assumed in these ancient times, but a relative uncertainty, for they saw eclipses, or long periods of overcast sky when for all they knew the sun had abandoned them. Often this fear resulted in sin, which is occasionally represented as fire.

In the Sun Mother myth of the Australian Aborigines, they believed she rose to the sky after creation of the world, but when she went beyond the horizon leaving night, they thought she had deserted them, but when she rose again the next morning their fear was assuaged. As a result, rites and rituals to perpetuate the new morning were developed.

The Greeks, who have perhaps the most imaginative of the creation and early human stories, have both these night-fear, fire-sin themes. As Murtagh states:

      The people . . . never become afraid of darkness because [Prometheus] gives them the fire which bestows Zeus' anger upon them. In giving the people fire to which only the gods were supposed to have access he had caused Zeus' wrath to fall on both him and them.

The last area I have time to discuss this morning is the category of gods creating suffering. In many of the world myths of creation, human error is the cause of all suffering, but in some cases a god is cited as the cause. As in the Prometheus story; the people ultimately suffered for accepting his gift of fire, not for any folly or sin on their part. So all the world’s troubles were his fault (when they weren’t Pandora’s via Zeus). In the Japanese myth, the gods Izanagi and Izanami had three children, and one was a troublemaker. He was forced to the seas so he would not damage the world of their islands. But his anger developed the storms and tidal waves which have always plagued Japan.

I limited my scope today to some of the more easily understood creation myths, for many are very intricate and convoluted, and often rely on a great deal of understanding of the local culture. But suffice it to say, that wherever a community formed in those long ago days, stories emerged to answer the questions that arose regularly then as they still do today. Why are we here? How did life come to be here? How do we understand the reasons for our existence? In the last two thousand years or so, more people think they have the answers to these questions by virtue of their interpretation of far more ancient stories. Some would claim their creation story is the only creation story, but that is simply not true.

Joseph Campbell during his years as a professor at Sarah Lawrence University, found archetypal themes which could be found in the world mythologies, a beauty of a kind in the way human beings took what they saw around them and heard a story that resonated with their lives.

In an interview with Thomas Collins of the Context Institutes, Collins asked Joseph Campbell: What does myth do for us? Why is it so important?

Campbell responded:

      [Myth] puts you in touch with a plane of reference that goes past your mind and into your very being, into your very gut. The ultimate mystery of being and nonbeing transcends all categories of knowledge and thought. Yet that which transcends all talk is the very essence of your own being, so you're resting on it and you know it. The function of mythological symbols is to give you a sense of "Aha! Yes. I know what it is, it's myself." This is what it's all about, and then you feel a kind of centering, centering, centering all the time. And whatever you do can be discussed in relationship to this ground of truth. Though to talk about it as truth is a little bit deceptive because when we think of truth we think of something that can be conceptualized. [Myth] goes past that.

In our own ways we each are myth-makers. We create out of the stuff of our lives a story that makes sense, that relates to that knowing Campbell was talking about. These are our own attempts to know ourselves, which is to my mind the greatest of all the spiritual disciplines of growth. This is what Socrates taught us: to know ourselves, to know our fears, our weaknesses, to recognize our vulnerabilities, and to find our own salvation.

Myth is deeply spiritual, deeply connected to that sometimes desperate need to know, to have meaning for our existence. In that, all myths have relevance, all myths are worth study, for they remind us that for as long as there have been people, they have struggled with the same spiritual questions that you and I face.

For many of us, science has given answers to most of these questions; but science cannot answer them all. I am with Stephen J. Gould, the Harvard scientist who said that we clearly need both, but that we need to keep a wide berth between them.

As with the myths of old, which changed over time, adapted to altered circumstances, and many eventually died, our own personal myths will rarely be static, but need to be seen in the light and with the scrutiny of our growing lives if they are to be meaningful. That, my friends, is our work here as UUs. To challenge our ideas, to consider the new, the different, even the difficult or repugnant, in order to learn, to grow, and to work toward a greater spiritual enlightenment.

So be it.

 

April 9, 2006 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean Canvass Sunday

April 9, 2006

Why Should We Care?

The writer and humorist Bennet Cerf once told about a very astute minister who surprised his small congregation one hot, sweltering summer Sunday morning with this announcement:

      Friends, I have here in my hands a hundred-dollar sermon that lasts ten minutes, a fifty-dollar sermon that lasts twenty minutes, and a twenty-dollar sermon that lasts a full hour. We will now take up the collection and see which one I will deliver.

Keep in mind that story was written in the fifties, so inflation has to be taken into consideration.

Those who have not been around here for this annual Canvass Sunday before, should know that this sermon was long ago dubbed by Frank MacArtor, one of our founders, the Sermon on the Amount. This sermon is supposed to move you to give generously to support this congregation, its ministry, religious education, social action, social events, indeed all its programs, and now for three years this facility. I feel daunted every year at the prospect of how I might do this. Money is always a tetchy subject; not getting of it, but the giving of it. Some people immediately recognize that money is no more or less than a tool that allows us to have kinds of things we want, and that includes the kind of religious community we want. Others of us, and I include myself in this number, begin our relationship with both money and religion rather conservatively, and need to be shown whether we are getting value for what we give. Others still, need more education in order to understand that this congregation does not exist, nor can it survive, without people who are willing to support it. And, sadly, there are some few who are happy to enjoy what others provide. Now, I am not talking about dollar amounts here, for the parable of the poor widow’s mite holds just as true today as when first uttered by the rabbi Jesus. To give what you can when you have little is a far greater deed that to give little when you have much, even if that little is a far larger amount. For the giving that comes from a real commitment to the higher goals of religious community is what ultimately makes a congregation thrive or just survive.

It is to that commitment, then, that I turn this morning. I ask myself, why do I care whether this Unitarian congregation thrives? Why did I care whether the other UU congregations I have belonged to before I was a minister should have existed and should continue thrive? This question is the root of commitment, and ultimately of our support for our religious community. So I ask you: Why should we care? Why should you care? Why do you care?

I know many of you have mathematical minds and like numbers, so here is a bit of research about the reasons people state, across denominational lines, for wanting to be part of religious communities. Perhaps, you will relate to one or more of the categories. These are from Wade Roof (via Del Webb Research) professor and Chair of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (the ranges represent the difference shown between those under or over fifty years of age): Between 48-55% are looking for spiritual well-being; 22-25% are looking for community; 14-15% looking for a way to do service; 4-6% are concerned with issues of mortality; and 1-3% have concerns related to guilt. (Frankly, I am surprised that guilt doesn’t merit a higher score, since it seems to be such a motivating factor in many of our lives.)

No doubt for some of us all of these play some role, maybe each is a factor in our need for religious community. Or, it is also possible that we have never stopped to think about why we desire to be part of a religious community. Sometimes people will tell me that their children were the motivating factor in coming here to Mill Creek; they were looking for a religion that would not lay a heavy hand of doctrine upon them, yet help them develop their religious sense, their innate spirituality. That is a good reason; yet, there needs to be a reason the parents want this community for themselves as well, otherwise once the children have grown and gone through the religious education program, the parents may feel they have no more need of the community. I find that both sad, and to some degree feel that the community is ill-used by such thinking. Further, the example set by the parents tends to be repeated, so if in fact we really want our children to value spirituality, to be seeking and growing all their lives, then one assumes we would not see that as just a K-12 year experience within the faith community. And, what about the next generation? Shouldn’t we as parents be equally concerned for those yet to come?

There are many more people who identify themselves as Unitarian in belief than actually support and attend a UU congregation. These people come to UU ministers for weddings, child dedications, memorials-funerals, even counseling occasionally. They want, indeed they expect, that there will be a Unitarian minister at hand when they want one. There are also many people who have no religious affiliation with any group, who turn to us for the various rites of passage. I confess to a regular sense of both mission and irritation about this fact. Many religions will not permit their ministers to officiate at such services unless the people are members. I often have people call me up and tell me that they tried this, that, or the other religious body and were refused, which is why they are now calling me. (Doesn’t exactly warm the cockles of my minister’s heart!) I try to find an opportunity to point out, by way of outreach, why I am willing to so some of these rites (I won’t do child dedications anymore outside our community, because I simply don’t think it makes any sense), and to try to help them understand that if it were not for people like you sitting here this morning, I would not be here to perform these services. One can only hope that they get the message. I do know that many of these people eventually do come to be part of UU congregations, so I believe it is worth the effort.

Unitarian Universalists are such a diverse group in terms of spiritual belief and practice, which is one of our greatest virtues. That such a community can exist is a testament to what civilization might aspire to as a whole. We are in many ways the seed from which the future religions are even now sprouting.

There are many people now questioning if religion will have a future at all, and for me the answer is unequivocally Yes. It has a future as long as people exist in the dark of unknowing about where we have come from and where we might be going, and in the dim uncertainties of the life in between, we will need religion. In the Skeptic magazine, the response given by one writer, to whether religion would continue as a force on the planet was: Religion will survive as along as there is fear, conflict, and ignorance.

This writer has a pretty rational viewpoint, one no doubt shared by many UUs, but I am inclined to the positivist understanding about why people will continue to want religion.

First, and growing ever more important as the nuclear family and nuclear communities become more dispersed, people need community. Community is a significant part of our spiritual well being. This need for community may function at a greater or lesser degree at different points in our lives, but ultimately most people long to belong. We especially long to be part of groups among like-minded folk with whom we can be honest and open about the real stuff of life. That is not a workplace or neighborhood function most of the time, but a function of the family and of the faith community. We become a family in our congregations. We see the children come into the world, watch them grow and mature into their young adult years, we watch as our members deal with the various difficulties of life, loss of loved ones, illness, aging, and we cry as we lose them to death.

I am often asked if it isn’t hard to listen to people’s problems, spend time at hospitals and nursing homes, do funerals and other such duties as minister’s perform, but I find this a part of pastoral caring, human caring, that is never really hard. What is hard for me is when beloved members move away or when they pass away; that is when my heart grieves. For I am losing part of my family, we are losing part of our family. This is not just some abstract metaphor, it is a reality. The longer you belong to this faith community, the more real this understanding of our congregational family becomes. Each one of you, each one of us, is cared about here. That is fact.

Why should we care whether UUSMC is a healthy, thriving, vibrant religious community? What does it matter to you if the doors close tomorrow, the building is sold, and we cease to exist altogether? For me it is unbearable that this could happen. When I look about this place we worked so hard to build, I see not walls and windows, chalice, banner, chairs, rooms and grounds in this facility, I see love, devotion, dedication, belief in what at times, when we were in the gym at the Chinese Community Center for twelve or thirteen years, seemed impossible. I see goodness, hope in the future, I see passion, hearts and minds clinging tenaciously to this beautiful free faith of ours and wanting to see that it is made available to many more now, and beyond to our posterity. In other words, I see faith in the significance of our Unitarian Universalist religion. This religion is a small, but oh so precious jewel in a world filled with a lot of glitter and glam, but little of real substance. For unlike all that is superficial, this is a faith with substance, grounded in our ethical principles, and dedicated to the free exercise of spiritual truth as we each understand it.

When I came here to be your minister in 1995, I had no idea of where we would eventually wind up, but I could tell by the spirit of the membership that we would survive, and that we would one day have our own home. Now, in my eleventh year here, as I look toward to some misty day of retirement, I occasionally think about what I hope we will have accomplished together by that time. I can see many wonderful possibilities, and I know that where there is a will among UUs, a way will be found. My faith in this is absolute. Personally, I hope to see the day that that core of junior high youth who were here when I began and who have now grown up and gone off to their new lives in college or elsewhere, I hope to one day see their children running—I mean walking—the halls of this building. Or, at least coming to visit. I would have then seen the full circle of one generation leading into the next. That would be greatly fulfilling to me as a minister.

In the main, UUs are people who see life as an unfolding journey of the spirit/mind, a journey of growth, learning, and seeking. Yes, you can do much of that on your own, but we can do so much more together. That is the virtue and vitality of religious community, that we grow together, learn together, seek to push the envelop of human society’s various dictates like racial segregation, gay rights, social justice issues in all their sad forms. This requires our joint efforts, and gives us our joint successes. Again, it is about a community of like minds and hearts.

Nowadays, many young people are leaving the mainstream religions, upwards of 30% according to a recent Gallup poll. Religion researcher George Barna says this is in part because, young people really have no interest in what they perceive to be old people’s religion. He goes on to say that traditional religion: conflicts with a culture that wants everything customized and personalized. He says, though, that many, as they mature, will want to settle into a church to be consistent and positive for their children. Another researcher, Randal Balmer, sees young people: rejecting religion for its institutional overtones. Spirituality is [for them] eclectic and infinitely malleable. He say further in what sounds awfully condemning, that they want, religion with No strings. No obligations.

Well, much of what they want is what we UUs have plenty of, but what we don’t have, nor does any organized community have, is a place where there are no strings and no obligations. Ultimately, somebody has to be responsible for providing the place, the services, the staff, paying the gas and electric, etc, etc, etc. Ideally, we all do our fair share in the ways that we can. But there are always strings and obligations.

My general philosophy about taking care of the religious community is this: If you have time and little money, give your time and a little of your money. If you have little time and more money, give a little of your time and more of your money. If you have a lot of both time and money, give a lot of both. No faith community survives and thrives just because of money. However, even if we had millions of dollars, this is still primarily a volunteer organization, which needs lots of volunteers giving of their time to make things work. Certainly, we can do more when we have more money to them, but without people who love this faith enough to work for it, the money would not be really very useful.

There are opening words in the back our hymnal that say, love is the doctrine of this church, and from that I say that love is the foundation of our free faith. Love in its many forms is what we have built upon from the beginning. Love for humankind, for each other, love for the free mind, love for the free search for truth, love for all that our ethical principles state.

So, to answer the question of my sermon title, I say that my answer to the question, Why should we care?—is love. Because we love this precious UU faith, love this community, and love this flame of possibility that resides so potently in our hearts and minds.

One pastor said to his gathering at the pledge Sunday sermon: Now sisters and brothers, I ask that we all give generously, indeed let us all give in accordance with what we reported on Form 1040. That is one way of looking at how to give, but regardless of what you give, or whatever guidelines you use in deciding what you will give, I ask that you give with a generous and open heart, and always out of love.

So be it.

 

April 16, 2006 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

April 16, 2006

Easter: Eggs, Bunnies, the Vernal Equinox, and Jesus

As a Unitarian I have often felt conflicted about this primarily Christian holiday of Easter. In part, because we as Unitarians do not see this as a literal story of fact, that Jesus is God reborn for the sins of all people; rather we see that Jesus was a man of conscience, a rebel against a hide-bound faith that had lost its center, and who was willing to live and to die as an act of sacrifice to truth. That, in and of itself, is a powerful message. We do not need a miracle story for this story to be moving. After all, is it not rare enough that people will live and die for truth, for freedom, for right of conscience? Further, if we believe that the spirit of such holy people lives on, and it would be hard to deny that it does, then we can claim the resurrection as a fact of memory.

Beyond the story of Jesus’ resurrection, though, there is all around us the messages of Easter come full force in the burgeoning of the vernal equinox, the spring that is always bringing with it reminders of death and resurrection. This is our reality, that life comes into being, lives to protect life, and dies, and that each new generation is the resurrection of life. Like the phoenix, out of the ashes reborn, out of our lives comes new life.

Perhaps the reason why Christians, and we UUs who derived from Christian Protestantism, still feel a connection with this holiday is that we in our deepest places of wisdom and knowing recognize these basic facts. We are all connected; no one lives or dies without touching another human being, no one.

Further, this connection with the deep symbolism of life, and its marvelous regenerating power, was recognized by early humans and clearly evidenced in the earliest signs of human existence. There was deep reverence for birth, for fertility, for the sanctity of new life, each new generation of family and crop and all the creation around them. They lived this reality in a close day-by-day relationship that we have lost for the most part in the modern world. From those ancient ancestors we have been given stories; and even as the story of Jesus remains with us for over two millennia, their stories of hundreds of millennia remain with us, also. That is the usually unspoken story of bunnies, eggs, sunrise gatherings, flower offerings, and offerings of sweetmeats all in recognition of these truths of life, death, continuance.

Most people in UU circles have heard about the way that religion borrows and bestows as it comes into contact with other religious beliefs and practices. There is no such thing as a pure religion, untouched by location, culture, experience of time and place. We can see this clearly in any religion, even our own. While many things are familiar, a Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, or Unitarian service held in Warsaw will look somewhat different than a service held in Mexico City, or Hong Kong, etc.

Religions have been in this process of learning and borrowing from other religions as long as religion has been around. I see no reason to believe this will ever cease to be the case; nor do I doubt that there will continue to be religions who claim they alone have the Truth, and that all others are heretics, misguided, or otherwise lesser religious human beings for their differences.

But here are some of the things we know, both from unwritten archeological evidence, written history, and the tracings of culture one to another. As religion writer Jeff Simmonds describes the phenomenon of eggs as part of Christian Easter celebrations:

      [P]ainted eggs were given and received each spring by pagans, as a symbol of the birth of the new season. Christians continued this pagan practice, but invested the ancient tradition with new meaning - a commemoration of the new life found in the Resurrection.

      In many communities the pagan origin was forgotten and any pagan meaning was completely supplanted by Christian symbolism. In Greece Easter eggs were (and are) often painted red, to symbolise the blood of Christ. In Russia many Easter eggs are painted with icons of Christ.

      Some Christian writers and thinkers also sought to express the Gospel in terms which pagans would understand - and in some instances created a synthesis of biblical and pagan thinking. Sometimes this was an effective way of winning pagans to faith in Christ. At other times it compromised the Gospel and ensnared believers in a paganised faith.

       

As Simmonds points out, the exchange was two way. Sometimes more of the Christian got implanted, sometimes more of the ancient religions survived.

One way to think about this is what happens when a couple gets married. Each of the pair brings a given family history, with various rites and rituals that are significant in their family of origin, then these usually become melded into a new tradition for that family. Obviously, in the days when people married from within fairly homogenous communities, the traditions would have differed less. But as the great migrations of humankind have taken place, are even now taking place, more and more couples come from very difference traditions. In this congregation we have many such blended families where Jewish and Christian or various forms of Protestant and/or Catholic, Hindu and Christian, non-religious and religious couplings, and from these the traditions blend. Everywhere in the western world this is changing how people understand tradition. We UUs see this as a wonderful opportunity for spiritual growth, a great buffet, as it were, of beautiful religious ways of being.

Naturally, there are those who do not find this a thing of beauty, for they are fundamentalists in their thinking and in their religion, which means they desperately want to hold on to what they have learned is Truth. It can be a destructive way of being, as we learned so powerfully with the acts of terrorism that took us into the Iraq War and keep it fueled with hatred, jealousies, and all that is worst in humankind.

Looking further at how eggs, and bunnies, and crucifixions all come together; for example, we know that Jesus’ birth could not have taken place in December, and that it was changed to the time of the very important Roman festival celebrating the Sun God at the winter solstice. In like manner:

      The date on which Jesus' death and resurrection was celebrated was also changed - after much controversy. Jesus, of course, had been executed during the Jewish festival of Passover, but at some point Christians - probably Gentile Christians with a background in paganism - began celebrating this around the time of the vernal equinox (the date in spring when night and day are the same length - normally around March 21).

      This date was associated with a pagan goddess who was linked to the rebirth of Spring. In ancient England she was worshipped as 'Eostre', the name from which the word 'Easter' is apparently derived.

      The practice of holding an Easter Sunday service at dawn has its origins in pagan celebrations which welcomed the arrival of the goddess at the vernal equinox.

       

Keep in mind, that the exchanges, the borrowings across traditions, happened both ways.

      The Easter bunny probably also has its origins in paganism. The rabbit is a symbol of fertility (hence, "they breed like rabbits") and therefore became an appropriate symbol of spring and new life. While some pagan practices associated with Christmas and Easter became Christianised, some Christian customs slowly lost their religious meaning.

      [and]

      The now secular tradition of the Easter basket filled with eggs and chocolates has its origin in the Christian practice of bringing baskets with bread, cheese and [meat] to mass on Easter Sunday morning to be blessed. After weeks of austerity and abstinence during Lent, Easter Sunday was a joyful celebration with special treats and goodies

Now some Christians reject that ancient religion is in any way a part of Christianity, and denounce Halloween, Christmas, Easter celebrations that have any of the traditional elements that bespeak the earlier religions of the world.

      More extreme groups not only denounce Father Christmas and the Easter bunny, but also believe that any celebration of Easter and Christmas [or Halloween] is a Satanic plot. (One such writer on the Internet declared eating hot cross buns, Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies to be "Antichrist activities" which Satan has devised to turn Christians into idolaters!) At the other end of the spectrum are Christians who think, simply, that it's "all good fun". (At this extreme would be Christian parents who are happy for their children to go trick and treating at Halloween.)

      Between the two extremes is an approach which seeks to discern what is biblical, what has legitimately been redeemed from paganism and is an acceptable part of Christian tradition, and what is anti-Christian and to be rejected. Is the Easter bunny a tool of the devil, a symbol of the new life we achieve through the Resurrection, or an excuse to have another chocolate?

      In the end, the origin of a thing does not necessarily determine what it means today. The fact that Easter eggs (or the word 'Easter' itself) have their origin in [ancient religion] does not mean that eating chocolate eggs today is a pagan activity. It may be completely secular, or (for Christians) may be imbued with Christian significance.

      And rather than worrying about how third century Christians adopted pagan ideas and practices, we may be better off thinking about how the Church today does the same thing, and how easily we uncritically accept the 'pagan' ideas of our own culture and society. Today's 'gods' of success, prosperity and consumerism may pose more of a threat to modern day Christianity than hot cross buns, Easter bunnies and chocolate eggs ever did.

       

Unitarian Universalists look for truth, with a lower case t, rather that some single capital T Truth. After all, is it not better to lift up the sometimes frightening realities of our existence with hope, rather than with fear? Is it not better to focus on new life, than on death?

One of our great Unitarian ministers of the 19th Century, the scholarly James Freeman Clarke, who helped our Unitarian understanding of this story of salvation by teaching that our real salvation is that which is seen not in just our words, but in our actions, or as he termed it we have “salvation by character”; Clarke looked upon the resurrection as teaching that is not intended to be about the physical coming back to life that later Christians believed in, but the metaphorical resurrection that scholars have found was the common mode of teaching at the time when these scrolls were first written. Clarke taught us to see the resurrection in the light it was most likely seen in originally; that is, as he wrote:

    What seems death is only change, and a change from a lower to a higher state, therefore rising up, or resurrection. Christ, then, the love of truth of God in the soul, is the life and the resurrection. He fills the soul with that life which causes it to rise with every change, to go up and on evermore to a higher state . . . . The only real death is the immersion of the soul in sense and evil, the turning away from truth and God.

This, my friends, is the over-arching message of the Easter and the resurrection that has become meaningful for thousands of Unitarian Universalists, that we need not be afraid of death, nor afraid of being forgotten in death. It is the truth of Jesus’ message that how we live our lives for others, as well as ourselves—this was, he said, was the second greatest commandment, to love your neighbor/others as yourself--it is this that allows us to live in love, in truth, and for believers, in God. All the messages of Easter from colored eggs, to bunnies, and chocolate versions of both, are essentially one message, and that is hope; hope in the new day, the new year, the new life that is in each of us.

So be it.

 

April 23, 2006 Sermon

Rev. Keith Kron, UUA

Sunday, April 23rd , 2005

UU Society of Mill Creek, DE

The Van Gogh Café

Reading

“Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two and one.

And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t.

You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today.

And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid and that’s the part of you that’s still ten.

Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mother’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five.

And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like you’re three, and that’s okay.

That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next. That’s how being eleven years old is.

You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say “Eleven” when they ask you.

And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.

Reading

“The Possum” by Cynthia Rylant

from The Van Gogh Café

The Van Gogh Café sits on Main Street in Flowers, Kansas, and the building it was in was once a theater, which may be a reason for its magic. Anyone who has ever seen anything happen on stage—anything—knows that a theater is so full of magic that after years and years of opening nights there must be magic enough to last forever in its walls. The Van Gogh Café is lucky it hasn’t found itself in a building where people had their broken arms fixed or their teeth pulled out. These are not the sort of walls that harbor magic. But theater walls do.

Magic is a powerful word and often misused. Some say magic comes from heaven, and others say it comes from hell, but anyone who has ever visited the Van Gogh Café knows that magic comes from a building that was once a theater; from a sign above a cash register that reads BLESS ALL DOGS; from a smiling porcelain hen on top of the pie carousel, from purple hydrangeas painted over the ladies’ bathroom; from a small brown phonograph that plays “You’d be so nice to come home To.” Magic is in the Van Gogh Café in Flowers, Kansas, and sometimes the magic wakes itself up, and people and animals notice it. They notice it and are affected by it and pretty soon the word spreads that there is a café--the Van Gogh Café--that is wonderful, like a dream, like a mystery, like a painting, and you ought to go there, they will say, for you will never forget it. You will want to stay if you can. Some have for a while like the possum . . . .

Kansas is not what one would call picturesque. It is flat. So flat it could make some people a little crazy, people who need a hill now and then to keep their balance. But in Kansas at least things get noticed. The flatness makes everything count and not one thing slips by. That is why, if a possum was going to choose to hang upside down somewhere, Kansas would be a good choice. People would notice. And if the possum chose to hang outside the window of the Van Gogh Café in Flowers… well then, everyone would start talking about magic. And that would be good for the possum, too.

The Van Gogh Café is owned by a young man named Marc and his daughter, Clara. Clara is one reason for all of the magic in the café. She is ten and believes anything might happen.

Marc and Clara open up the café at six every morning except Sundays, when they sleep until ten. Clara takes breakfast orders for Marc—who is the cook—for half an hour on school mornings, then she goes to their apartment across the street to get ready for school. Clara likes taking orders because everyone is sleepy and sweet and all they want in the world is a cup of coffee, please. Clara thinks morning is the kindest time of day.

Most of the people who come to the Van Gogh Café are Flowers people and know each other: “Hi Ray.” “Hello, Roy.” But sometimes someone is new, for Flowers sits near I-70, which people take when they are escaping from an old life in the East to a new life in the West or the other way around. Clara has met many people between six and six-thirty on their way to something new.

But she has not met a possum until today. Today is Saturday and she’s working a couple extra hours for her father, and it is eight o’clock in the morning when suddenly a possum is hanging upside down in the tree outside the café window. Right on Main Street. A minute ago it wasn’t there and now it is.

Clara sees it first: Look, there’s a possum. Coffee cups go down, heads turn, and outside a little gray possum enjoys being noticed. It scratches its nose and blinks its eyes and stares back at all the faces.

No one sitting down can say hello to a possum. So everyone in the café gets up and stands in front of the window. Now, this is the magic of the Van Gogh Café: not one person says, “Amazing! A possum upside down on Main Street!” No, everyone is not all that surprised. They, like Clara, have come to believe anything might happen, because they have been having breakfast at the Van Gogh Café all their lives.

What they do say is, “Hi.” Many of them wave. Ray asks Roy what possums eat. And, with their usual curiosity about every new person in Flowers, they all say, “Wonder where he’s from?”

Well, it’s hard to know a possum’s story before he does something magical, but after he does, there’s story and more to tell.

One of the first stories is that the possum starts coming back to the Van Gogh Café every day. Eight in the morning, he’s up in the tree.

But that’s a small story.

The possum begins to attract people, and this is the bigger story because he attracts people who haven’t been getting along. Best friends who had a fight the day before: today they’re standing on the sidewalk next to the possum. The possum is hanging upside down and blinking, and the two friends are talking, and suddenly they’ve got their arms around each other and are coming into the café for some pie.

A young husband and wife: the day before they’re yelling in the front yard, the next day they’re kissing beside the possum.

Two neighbors: the day before they’re arguing about loud music, the next day the possum is watching them shake hands.

The story becomes even bigger when people start bringing food out of the Van Gogh Café, food for the possum. Half an English muffin here, two pieces of oven-fried potatoes there, a cup of milk. They can’t help themselves; they want to give it some food.

The possum isn’t hungry. But a stray dog from the other end of town is, and he starts stopping by for breakfast. So does a thin cat and two baby kittens. And a shy small mouse. Several sparrows. Even a deer.

And this goes on for a while until the biggest story happens. A story that will enter quietly into the walls of the café and become part of its magic.

For a man whose wife has died drives through Flowers, Kansas, one morning on his way to something new. He is sad. He really isn’t sure where he’s going.

But passing the Van Gogh Café, he sees the possum. He sees the possum and he sees all the hungry animals standing beneath it, eating the scraps of muffins and potatoes.

And the man sees something else there, too, something no one has seen until now. And because of what he sees, he turns his car around and drives back where he belongs, back to his farm, which he turns into a home for stray animals, animals who come to him and take away his loneliness.

Since that day the possum at the Van Gogh Café has disappeared. One minute it was there, the next minute it wasn’t.

But the customers still bring food out of the café every morning, leaving scraps beneath the tree in case anyone hungry happens by. There is always a new stray dog, a new thin cat, sparrows.

Clara is not surprised the possum has gone away. Things are always changing at the Van Gogh Café, and something new is sure to happen soon. Perhaps when the silent movie star arrives…

 

Sermon: The Van Gogh Café

 

Not surprisingly I was unpacking children’s books at the time.

My principal, Jay Jordan, walked into my classroom and closed the door. He surveyed my room and shook his head, definitely a Keith Kron fourth grade classroom--a few books here (well, more than a few books), a few chairs there, two bulletin boards scattered all over the floor, my desk already swamped with papers. And school would not start for two days yet.

We looked at each other, and I knew I was at the OK Corral. I wasn’t sure what I was about to be shot for, but I knew something was up.

Perhaps you have seen the face and fidgeting of a nine-year-old child who lied to you twenty minutes before about having to go to the rest room and now really needed to go. My principal looked somewhat less composed than that.

He asked me if I had gotten his message from the day before about wanting to talk to him about something. I told him I had. Silence. More fidgeting. I began to have an inkling about what this conversation was going to be about.

“I am glad we’re on your turf,” Jay said. He looked at me for a minute. I nodded. Silence. Jay took a breath.

“You know Tristan Burke is no longer on your class list.” I nodded again.

“His mother made me take him out of your class.” Jay looked down and then back up. I nodded again. Tristan’s mother was president of the PTA that year. I only vaguely knew who Tristan was--and the only thing I knew about him was that he was the most effeminate boy I had encountered in five years of teaching.

“His mother made me take him out of your class because she says she knows you’re a homosexual. I don’t know how she knows it, but she knows it.” Jay looked at me. I looked at him and could see the wheels spinning in his head. I would wonder later if he could see the wheels spinning in mine.

Fortunately, and sadly, I had prepared for this moment. I had no doubts it would come at some point. Years of thinking about it had almost kept me from going into teaching, but the call to teach had won out.

I knew to say nothing. I knew to wait to be asked, then I would answer yes, and only then. I raised my eyebrows back at him. More silence. Part of me was hoping he would ask, that I would be given an opportunity to tell him, that I could finally tell my story.

He didn’t ask. He broke the silence. “This is ridiculous. You’re not the type to harm children.”

We looked at each other. I nodded quietly, realizing the support I was getting. It was a bittersweet moment for both of us. Jay finally mumbled, “I shouldn’t have pulled him out of your class.”

“She would have made your year horrible. Mine, too, for that matter.” I paused. “It’s okay.”

Jay nodded quietly back at me.

“We did reading groups today. Tristan will be in my class for reading. It’s an hour each day.” My voice trailed off.

Jay was firmer now. “You’ll get my backing. She’ll just have to deal with it. There’s another parent concerned too. I’ll deal with him too. We won’t talk about this again.” Jay surveyed my room.

“Now get this room cleaned up. I don’t know how you are going to be ready to teach in two days.” He spun on his heels and turned toward the door. He opened it and turned to me.

“I’m glad we did this on your turf,” he repeated.

He looked at me one last time, tried to smile, and left, closing the door behind him.

For the next four years, I never heard any of those complaints again. Tristan and I got along famously. I invited his mother into my reading class to help out when she could. She did, and we laughed a lot together. From me she learned the fine art of teasing children--and probably a few other things.

It occurs to me to tell you why I am here--why I do the work now as Director of the Office of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Concerns for our Unitarian Universalist Association--and not teaching fourth grade anymore.

I left because I was afraid.

It is more than being found out and fired because I was a known homosexual, though that’s certainly part of it. The longer I stuck around the greater the odds were that my private life would become public knowledge.

My parents, who have not used the words “gay” or “homosexual” in the 20 years I have been out to them, are a part of this story too. My dad was a principal in the same school system as I, and my mother taught first grade in Lexington as well. I never had the opportunity to think of fighting this battle alone, and my folks had given a lifetime of modeling to know how to overprotect people. Any public battle I chose there would have included them.

I lived four lives in Lexington, Kentucky. I lived a work life where I loved the work of teaching elementary school. I lived a family life where I had dinner with my folks once a week, visited my grandmother a lot, and overspent on my young relatives at Christmas. I lived a gay life where I hung out with friends, led a support group, and played volleyball. I lived a religious life where I sat on every committee in my home UU congregation and moved on to district and denominational work beyond that.

I even managed to begin to see some overlapping. Certainly my work life and family life overlapped some. And as I came out in church, my gay life and my religious life began to merge. I worked very hard at making my church a welcoming place for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. I worked very hard at bringing gays, lesbians, and bisexuals into my church. And it happened.

It happened in part because I started telling stories in church. I was able to tell the story about having a crush on Mr. Gardner, my high school drama teacher, and then telling him about it. I was able to tell the story of being in very Southern Baptist church as a teenager and having my “Anita Bryant” type Sunday school teacher ask me if I agreed with her that homosexuals were sick people.

I was able to tell the story of coming out to my parents and having my father ask me if I was going to molest children while my mother cried. I was able to tell the story of meeting a Unitarian Universalist minister in a gay bar and that’s how I became a Unitarian Universalist.

I was becoming aware that not only could I be eleven and ten and nine and eight and seven and six and five and four and three and two and one, but I could talk about them as well. You see, my real fear was not that someone like my principal would ask me if I was gay, would ask me my story. My real fear is that I would never get to tell it.

This is what the radical right wants--to control our society so that only certain approved stories can be told.

I was afraid I would never get to have a life. I was afraid I would always have four of them.

My fear was not that my private life would become public knowledge. My fear was either that it never would, or it would happen only on someone else’s terms.

When I hear people say they want to make sure they have a private life and a public life, I wonder, “Do they really want two lives?” Categories for human beings are really a bad idea.

I think I learned that during my conversation with my principal.

As an aside, I do understand that people are talking about control and choice when they make the point about having a private life. I’m all for that. I just believe human beings do better when they only have one life to juggle. It’s more than enough to do.

So it was after this conversation with my principal when I began to know the need to make a change. I looked around me and became sadly aware of the number of people leading more than one life at a time.

My teaching colleague who had been married to a man with a sexual addiction for children.

My father who tried to pretend he never had a father and never talked, or talks, about him.

My friend Steve who quit playing the piano because he became a librarian.

My friend Saundra who told no one about her live-in boyfriend, Dick.

All of these people and so many more who never got to be eleven. It was hardest for me to see in the children I taught. Children who came to school and then went home and cooked and cleaned for younger brothers and sisters. Children who knew they could not fail. Children who went home to wars. And by the time they were nine years old they knew to keep these lives quiet.

Religious Educator Maria Harris talks about implicit education--what is taught without saying it. I knew I was implicitly teaching these children to have more than one life. There had to be a better way.

I looked at how I might make it a better way. I learned of cities that had nondiscrimination policies for teachers. I did not trust that those were real.

I looked at the amount of work I had to do. And I thought about the fact that I often spent more time documenting what I taught and how I taught it and who was there to hear it, than I did actually getting to teach.

So I decided to look elsewhere. The person I saw doing the most teaching was my minister and the other ministers I knew. And they didn’t have to fill out report cards either.

I remembered Jesus was a teacher in many ways. Rabbis consider themselves as teachers. I watched the UU ministers I knew and I watched the way they taught the people around them--by telling stories, often their stories.

At the same time I was leading homophobia workshops in UU congregations--not how to have more of it, mind you, but how to have less. I learned quickly three things about teaching adults.

1) They don’t necessarily have longer attention spans than children. They just do a better job of faking. Usually engaging people on an emotional level increases their attentiveness.

2) Adult learning is as much about unlearning as it is about learning.

3) The product isn’t nearly as important as the process.

So how do you teach people to be less homophobic? You are explicitly teaching them about homophobia. You are implicitly teaching them about vulnerability.

That’s where the possum shows up. That’s where the magic happens. As people let themselves become more vulnerable, they become stronger and less homophobic. I did this through telling stories--sometimes my stories. And I was blessed with the stories of others.

I saw the possibility for having one life.

A friend of mine from seminary and I were talking one day and she said you could learn a fair amount about a person by asking them these four questions:

1) When did you stop singing?

2) When did you stop dancing?

3) When did you stop playing?

4) When did you stop telling your story?

For the record, I stopped singing in third grade in music class when Mrs. Rice told me I couldn’t sing--though I still hum to myself when I think no one is looking.

I still go dancing.

I still play.

And as I told my friend, “It’s more a matter of when I started telling my story than when I stopped.”

I stopped telling my story at fourteen. It would be ten years later that I started telling some of my stories again. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve not had to figure out what story I could tell where.

Like the story of the possum, one story leads to another. And when we hear our story in another’s story, well, that’s the magic. That’s when we encounter mystery.

What are your stories? Have you stopped telling them? Do you only tell them in certain places, in certain lives? How well do you know the stories of those around you? The stories in this room--your stories--are magical. I hope you are not afraid to tell them. They are your life and they let you be fully eleven or whatever age you are.

A final story from the Van Gogh Cafe’ and then I will close.

It is winter at the cafe’.

Marc is in the back cooking, though the restaurant is empty. Clara is putting napkins into the napkin holder when a man walks in. He is tall and slender and moves like water. He is strikingly handsome and a fabulous dresser. Black cloak, black cashmere scarf, black wool gloves, black cane.

His white hair sets it off perfectly. He must be 90. Clara takes his order.

“Tea, plain. Boiled egg, please. Thank you.”

Clara thinks there is something romantic about him.

After his food is served, Marc comes out looking for his watch. He looks around and sees the man. Marc stops what he is doing and stares. He is staring because he knows who this elegant man in the cafe’ is.

He is a star.

Clara doesn’t know, of course. She has watched the old movies with her father, but, except for Chaplin, doesn’t know their names. Only their movements.

And it is perhaps the way the elegant man has moved through the cafe’ that reminds her of something she has seen before. Reminds everyone. But none can quite place the memory.

The breakfast hours pass and people go their way, to work, to the mall at the edge of town, back home.

But the elegant man stays on. He has hardly touched his egg. His teacup is still half full. The door of the Van Gogh Cafe’ opens and closes, opens and closes, and he stays on looking out the window.

Marc cannot help himself. When there is no one left in the cafe’ except the silent star, Marc walks over to his table. Clara, curious, shyly follows.

Marc offers his hand and the man gracefully takes it. They shake.

“I know you work,” Mark says softly. “I love it. I love all your films.”

Clara’s eyes are wide. She has not known until know that a star is in her cafe’. The old man blushes and smiles.

“Thank you,” he says.

There is an awkward moment, then graciously, he offers Marc and Clara the two empty chairs at his table. Happily, they sit.

Marc and the silent star talk about the old films as Clara listens. There is an innocence in her father’s face she has not seen before. He is like a boy. The silent star seems pleased, quietly thrilled, to talk of his work with someone who who understands so well--to finally tell his story. He laughs and sighs and even trembles slightly, reliving it all.

There is a moment or two when each is quiet, catching a breath.

“Why, sir, are you at the Van Gogh Cafe’?” Marc gently asks. Clara waits.

The old man seems glad someone has asked. He reaches into his coat and pulls forth an old photograph. He hands it first to Clara, then to Marc.

It is of a beautiful young man in a waistcoat and top hat, standing before an old theater. Marc looks carefully at the building in the picture.

“Is this…?”

“Yes,” replies the silent star.

The building is the Van Gogh Café. In 1923. When it was a theater.

“He and I did some shows here together, the summer we met.” The silent star smiles and puts the photograph back inside his coat.

“Today I am waiting for him,” he says.

Clara’s heart is pounding. She feels that she herself is in a movie. Every gesture the man makes, each word he speaks is so beautiful to her. She knows the café remembers this man. She can feel it drawing in to him, reaching for this man who has been a part of its first magic, on the stage of the old theater.

Oddly, not one person has walked into the café to break this spell.

Marc offers the star a fresh cup of tea and a piece of apple pie, which is gratefully accepted. Then Marc and Clara leave the old man to his waiting.

The lunch hours come and go. Then the dinner hours. The silent star waits. Occasionally Clara or Marc offer him something, but he politely declines. And they find themselves watching the window, watching the door, for a beautiful young man in a top hat and waistcoat

Finally, it is time to close and still the old man is waiting. He seems very tired now. But unworried. He asks Marc if he might sit by the window a little longer

“Of course,” says Marc, though he offers his guest room to the man, offers to take him home for the evening and return him to the table by the window the next day.

But the man is certain his friend is coming very soon.

“Very soon,” he says.

So Marc takes Clara home and returns to the café a few hours later, to check on the old man.

At first Marc thinks the man is asleep. Then Marc realizes that he has died.

In the old man’s hand, Marc finds a newspaper clipping, cracked and yellow. The clipping shows the face of the beautiful young man in top hat and waistcoat. It reports that he has drowned, in 1926.

And in the old man’s other hand is the same photograph that Marc and Clara were shown. But now the photograph is changed. The beautiful young man is gone, and there is only a soft empty light where he was standing.

Marc and Clara keep the photograph and the newspaper clipping inside a small box near the cash register, and on Christmas Eve when everything is quiet, they look at these again. They each think how perfect that the silent star has died where he found his true love. That he came to the Van Gogh Café and waited for his friend to take him home.

Whatever forces are against you, whatever pain and suffering is yours, whatever joy you have, whatever your story is, my wish for you is that you share your story whenever and wherever you choose--whether you are 11 or 90 or somewhere in between.

Sing. Dance. Play. Tell your stories. Listen to the stories of others. Live your one life. Feel. Feel its magic.
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