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November 2006 Sermons
November 12, 2006 SermonRev. Nancy D. DeanNovember 12, 2006Three Lucky ThingsOnce upon a time, there was a monkey keeper who was feeding little chestnuts to his charges. "I'll give you three in the morning and four in the evening," he told them. All the monkeys were angry. "All right then," said the keeper, "I'll give you four in the morning and three in the evening." All the monkeys were happy with this arrangement. Without adversely affecting either the name or the reality of the amount that he fed them, the keeper acted in accordance with the feelings of the monkeys. He too recognized the mutual dependence of "this" and "that." Consequently, the sage harmonizes the right and wrong of things and rests at the center of the celestial potter's wheel. This is called "dual procession." This little currant of Chinese wisdom tell us that often we like one thing versus another, while often there is little if any difference betwixt the two; but, in the words of the old adage, perception is everything. When it comes to our ideas about luck, perception is also everything. There are many wonderful quotes on luck, perhaps one of the most quoted comes from the wisdom of much tried scientist Louis Pasteur who responded when asked about being lucky to discover the process now called pasteurization that chance (or fortune) favors the prepared mind. We often hear, indeed daily hear, people say in passing that this or that event was lucky. I was lucky I left home fifteen minutes early and avoided that big traffic jam. Luckily, I haven’t caught the flu, yet. The yet implies that the person’s luck may play out before the flu season is over. And other such statements that tell me that the idea of luck is well with us. I suspect all of us use this word luck or some variation of it many times a week without giving it much thought. There is, it would seem, deep in our collective consciousness and language a belief that we are here on this planet, that we exist and survive here, in large measure due to the forces of good luck. Good luck usually meaning those things that are beyond our control, and for which we ought to be grateful. I have some sympathy with this understanding. There is not a one of us who cannot point to some experience of a close call, a near miss, an almost didn’t make it, a there but for the grace of God or goodness go I. In fact, it is amazing how widely we will reach to see these things. After 9/11, one heard from people all the time about how either they or someone they knew might have died had it not been for something that luckily prevented them from being at that location in New York or at the Pentagon. I did this myself. I was sitting beside my daughter holding one of my granddaughters who were seven weeks old, when my daughter turned the TV on and we saw the second plane crashing into the second tower. My daughter said that if she had been working she would have been in the building next door (and often went into the Trade Center for coffee or meals), and people in those immediately neighboring buildings also were injured and died. Suddenly, we see events as lucky in a way we did not before. I, too, saw myself as lucky, for not only was I now a grandmother with twin little beauties to adore, but my daughter was still mine, too. There is a song, perhaps originally a story, my source is skimpy, and I have not been lucky in tracking down its origin, but in a Mongolian song, a child asks her parents: Sun, moon, stars - what are they? The parents respond: Three lucky things. The child asks again: Greenery, flower, fruit - what are they? Again the parents respond: Three lucky things. Once more the child asks: Father, mother, me - what are they? The parents say: Three lucky things. This song triggered for me the old beliefs about things happening in threes, both lucky and unlucky. And I have to admit that it seems to often happen that deaths come in threes. Now is that because we just count them until three have passed, then feel the streak of bad luck has passed? Or is it simply a self-fulfilling prophecy? Maybe it is a bit of both. Lucky things or the idea that there is good luck or bad luck all falls into the general realm of superstition. At root I believe we all, even the most rational among us, have some superstitions. After all, superstition is deep in our cultural framework, from ancient days long before organized religion, but maintained even in organized religion. Whether we actively go about warding off bad luck, which we know has a lot to do with Halloween rites of old, or if we believe we are blessed because of good luck, luck remains a mystical idea. I agree wholeheartedly with Pasteur that we are more likely to be lucky if we have lain the groundwork by study, planning, diligence, and so on. Yet, I also believe in plain old luck. Sometimes you are just at the right place at the right time, and good things happen. There is nothing wrong in acknowledging that. But what often goes unacknowledged is that even the luckiest people also have their fair share of bad luck or hard times. Good luck is also believed to reside in certain talismans, such horseshoes, long believed to ward off evils, or four-leaf clovers (generally considered lucky because of their rarity), but there are many different good luck charms or talismans, and they vary according to culture. For instance, the dragon is considered a lucky emblem in China, but not for Europeans who in fact saw dragons as evil. Gold rings, as in wedding rings, are a European good luck token that generally lost its early meaning as it became the symbol for being married. The heart shape is also a good luck symbol, noting that goodness resides in the heart. Many others have been or remain good luck symbols: the pentagram; the Star of David (seen less so after the Nazi persecution and forced wearing of them); the heptagram or seven-pointed love star; the crescent and star (associated with Islam); the eye in the hand or eye in a triangle from ancient Egypt, and also from Egypt the ankh (looks like a cross with a loop at the top); the pictic and celtic knots with their interlocking geometric shapes, also celtic, the claddagh with its hands interlocked over a heart; Thor’s hammer of Scandinavia; the Native American medicine wheel, Tibetan prayer flags; the yin-yang symbol, and on and on. Many of us own one or more of these good luck symbols. I bought a box of maybe ten books at a church yard sale while I was in divinity school, and when I got home and started sorting through them, I opened a small book called Penny Candy, by Jean Kerr, a humor writer of the 40s-70s, and when I lifted the cover some two dozen four-leaf clovers began to fall out. The book was published in 1970, so for probably thirty years, they had been pressed into this book. I felt tremendously lucky! Especially since I had just been ordained and gotten my first ministry job at the First Parish Church, in Concord, MA. Regardless of any logic, I just felt luckier than I had before I found all those clovers. Most of those four-leaf clovers are now pressed inside the frame of a drawing of the First Parish Church given to me by a member of that congregation. I still feel lucky when I look at that picture and all those four-leaf clovers. How lucky can you get? I didn’t even have to go into a field looking for them; they just fell into my lap. Now is that luck, or is it merely coincidence? It may be either or both. For my part, I do not generally care all that much about taking some event or object as lucky, though I do have some qualms about things people do to try to bring good luck. Then we get into the realm of behaviors that are easily manipulated. Look in the back of comics or the cheap papers by the grocery check out counter, and you will find all manner of objects for sale guaranteeing good luck. This is quite a business in many parts of the world, selling good luck tokens, or prayer clothes, or four-leaf clovers in little glass amulets, etc. The idea of creating or buying good luck has the danger in it of taking responsibility for the quality of one’s life off the person and putting it onto objects. There in lies my concern. So how do we explain good luck? Mark Twain was once asked by a lady admirer if he believed in luck, and Twain responded: Certainly! How else can you explain the success of those you detest? In the last twenty or thirty years, several books have been written directed at business people, teaching them that luck is what happens when you work hard. Charles Burke is one such writer. He lays out seven secrets, he calls the, of good luck. They are: #1 Lucky people don't believe in luck. #2. "Bad" stuff happens to them too. #3. More people quit than lose. #4. Betting on losing hands makes losers. #5. Most good luck comes through other people. #6. Good luck favors those who have prepared. #7. You can attract good things, too. Several years ago Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, England, decided to research on luck; why some people seem lucky while others seem terribly unlucky. What he found was that we are often the carriers of our tendency toward good or bad luck. He writes; Take the case of seemingly chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying: "Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win £250." This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high.
It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected. As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs. Self-fulfilling prophecies Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. My research eventually revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good. Weisman taught both the self-describe lucky and unlucky people in his experiment techniques for becoming lucky and got dramatic results. As he states: These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck. One month later . . . 80% of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier. The lucky people had become even luckier and the unlucky had become lucky. Finally, I had found the elusive "luck factor" . These are Professor Wiseman's four top tips for becoming lucky: · Listen to your gut instincts - they are normally right · Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine · Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well · Visualise yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call. Luck is very often a self-fulfilling prophecy As the wise parents of the child who lifted up things in question as to their nature, the parents did not define or try to explain them, but simply cited them as things that were lucky in the child’s life. This is the spiritual message I glean from this story and from the realm of luck in general: Look for the good and you will be more apt to find it. Lao Tsu, the founder of Taoism has given me my favorite aphorism, heard here many times, but worth repeating every time, which is: Every front has a back. With very few exceptions this is true. We usually can find good that comes out bad, and bad that comes out of good. Which is the Taoist way of teaching us that all things are related, nothing either good or bad stands alone. This saying also reminds me of the comic Allan Sherman who said: For every set of horseshoes that human beings use for luck, somewhere in this world there's a barefoot horse. My favorite of all these teaching about how to create good luck in our lives comes from Charles Burke’s seven secrets, #5 (which, by the way, I have long considered my lucky number—why, I don’t remember), which says that most good luck comes through other people. No greater piece of wisdom can be learned than this. All the holiest of religious leaders have taught us that the greatest human calling beyond loving the holy is to love others as we would be loved; to care for one another. This is from where our most important and most significant good luck ultimately comes; from the good will of others. Let us be grateful for all our blessings, for all our good luck, and equally be a blessing to those around us. Many blessings up on you all, which is the minister’s way of saying God be with you or more simply, Good luck. So be it.
November 19, 2006 SermonRev. Nancy D. DeanNovember 19, 2006Faith, Hope, and CharityFrom the words of Paul in 1Corinthians 13:1-13: 1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 1f I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; lt is not irritable or resentful; 5 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. This is our traditional Thanksgiving Sunday prior to our great American festival of Thanksgiving Day. Despite the negative issues related to how Thanksgiving has been historically portrayed, and honoring that for many Native Americans this is a day of mourning for all they lost when the white Europeans took over their land, we still recognize the need for a day of Thankfulness, and it is to that we turn our thoughts and our value for Thanksgiving Day as we celebrate it now. Another very important point of thankfulness is that this is also Bring-a-Friend Sunday, a day we specially encourage you to think about inviting a friend or family member who might find this liberal faith of ours meaningful for their lives. Of course, we believe every Sunday is a good Sunday to bring a friend, and it is always a good point to remember that eight of ten new members (that’s 80%) in any congregation come because a friend did invite them. So this Bring-a-Friend Sunday tradition is just as much a reminder to us that we want to let people know what a good thing we have here in our Unitarian Universalist congregations. Of all the holy books that exist in the world, the Christian New Testament is the one that has most affected our western civilization. In fact, it is very hard to have a good grasp of either history or literature of the West without some basic knowledge of these important texts we call the Bible, which usually includes both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, or as they are more commonly known, the Old Testament and the New Testament. Clearly showing the bias of the Christian community that pulled some of the many religious texts together into the first Bible. Bible means books, so it was the first collection of these texts, some books, some letters, into the modern version of the Bible. Paul, the person who wrote many of the epistles or letters that form the New Testament can be said to be the primary reason for Christianity as it was to become. His rendering of the ideas of Jesus, and his teachings sent to the developing communities that were to be called Christian (keep in mind that Christian would not have been a word Jesus ever heard) remain a very important part of western culture. Some of Paul’s teachings were wonderful, but many were to haunt us, such as the teaching that women should be silent in the church. Fortunately, many religious communities have finally gotten over this, even if it took some two thousand years. Yet, for all that I personally take issue with Paul, I also credit him with one of most beautiful teachings on love ever written in his first letter to the Corinthians, now known as 1Corinthians 13:1-13 as you heard in the reading. [F]aith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. Charity is how this word was translated in the King James version, but the word from the Greek is in point of fact love, yet charity is also one way the Greeks understood love. Paul, like most people of his time, was unfamiliar in the main with romantic love as we now know it. Romantic love really was not part of any cultural context prior to the medieval period and the age of the knights in European culture. Certainly people loved one another, but love was, in rather simplistic terms, much more practical. Love was all forms of kindness, consideration, caring, all the way to the highest form of love which is respect, all as defined by the Greek culture which was the defining culture of Paul’s time. Rome accepted Greek culture, adapted it into Rome’s own. Love, then, or charity, is what I lift up today for your consideration. Charity, that is our impulse towards other people, may be the most important aspect of character, for how we react to others says volumes about the kind of person, the kind of people we are. Do we have the capacity to love others? Then, lifted yet to a higher level, Do we have the capacity to love others as we love ourselves? This is a tremendous challenge to those of us in this wealthy western culture. Even the poorest in this nation are in the main far better off than many people in the world, and certainly better off that any number of countries we could name that are now called developing countries in this language sensitive age, versus the third world of only a few years ago, versus the primitive or heathen of only a couple generations past. The times do keep pushing us toward a bit more civilization, which is another point for which we can be thankful. Charity has more than one meaning, although we tend to take it to mean kindness extended to others, especially when it is in the form of aid of some kind, financial or otherwise. That great Oklahoma wit Will Rogers could both participate in an act of charity and be uncharitable all in one effort. As it is told: Will Rogers was once toastmaster at a charity luncheon. There were so many important speakers that a time limit of five minutes had to be imposed. However, one speaker droned on for nearly half an hour and finally said, "I am sorry, Mr. Toastmaster, that I went beyond the limit, but I left my watch at home." Rogers responded: "Don't you even have a pocket calendar?" Charity is often a loaded concept for us, especially beginning with this Thanksgiving weekend and moving right on through the end of the year. Our mailboxes are already being stuffed with both catalogs and charity appeals in large number. I feel the weight of the fallen trees as I empty my mailbox these days. (Especially since my husband and I have different last names, so we get duplicates of most of these.) Because this is a major gift-giving time, and because it is assumed that our consumption will lead to sympathy with those who have little, or the effort to hope we will feel guilty that we have so much, when there are so many who have far less; for these reasons a more we are most called to charitable acts. Psychologically, it makes sense. In reality, it probably means many people make token gifts without really thinking about what the act of charity really means. For years, I could not pass a Salvation Army kettle without dropping in some small amount; the guilt was too great. After all, the Salvation Army does such great works of charity, and here I was laden with a shopping basket full of groceries, or bags of gifts, how could I pass by? That is until I learned they actively discriminate and lobbied the government against the gay and lesbian community, now I walk by with no problem, and give a much more thoughtful and meaningful gift to PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Which lifts up the point that charity is about love, not about temporarily relieving guilt. Love, that is, caring about one’s brothers and sisters in the world is the underpinning of the best of charitable acts. Which means it is best if we give it some thought. Faith, hope, charity, these three emotions, guide virtually all the best of human life. With out faith, little would happen. We must believe that there is something more than the daily grind of survival. Faith in a greater good beyond one’s own well-being, but tied to our well-being. We also need faith in our ability to do things to make life better, and that together we as families and communities can do things to make life better. We also need hope that there is something we can accomplish, faith and hope are allied to both our survival and to our greater good, to what counts for each of us toward a meaningful life. But, love is the greatest; love/charity is our ability to move outside of our own ego-centered needs and wants, to see the real needs and wants of those around us. To be loving, to be charitable, does not mean we give no thought to our own needs and wants; we do not have to be self-less, or give up all that we have to follow that abstract greater good that we may call God or goodness or simply compassion. There is in almost all of us and impulse towards compassion. Most of us have the capacity for empathy, can see ourselves in another’s shoes, and that moves most of us to charity at some level. This country is well documented as the most charitable nation on earth; it is also the country that has the greatest volunteerism, and the greatest number of people who are religious and who believe in God. We may not have been founded as a Christian nation, but we certainly were founded with a strong sense of Christian charity. It is clear down through our history, beginning not with the Pilgrims, but with the Indians who helped feed the Puritan Pilgrims. It is a terrible historical irony. Thanksgiving Day reminds us to be grateful, which is a good thing. We need a day of recognition for thankfulness, for then we are also reminded of the need for compassion and charity. I think this is a very good way to begin this season of giving. Beloved members and friends, we live by faith and hope, but we find meaning most in love. Love in all its manifold and significant forms. The great Unitarian preacher, A. Powell Davies, wrote this about love in 1948: When we meet the tragedy of the time we live in, first with fortitude, then with a more affirmative courage, and presently with faith, something begins to happen to us. Compassion is the word for a little of it; we lose our stridency, our harshness, our resentments. But love—in the sense of which I have just been speaking—embraces all o it. This love would change everything, and it would begin by changing everyone who make room for it. For Davies the Second World War and the impending Korean War were palpable reminders of the need for love, as he put it, as compassion, comprehension, patience, understanding, and forgiveness. If we could love in this way, he said, the soul would grow. Faith, hope, and charity as Paul described them, and as A. Powell Davies understood them, are based on a foundation of thankful hearts moved to love. Love of life, of our own lives in relation to the lives of those we care about the most, but also in relation to the lives of those we could easily dismiss or hate. Davies would no doubt be saddened that we are no closer to ending war in our time than his generation was, but I have both faith and hope that we are moving in that direction. This great age of communication is making it harder to dismiss whole nations or groups as some evil other, as has happened for untold generations. Our compassion is moved by the sights and sounds of reality of people’s lives around the world. Those suffering in wars from Iraq to central Africa, in disasters from tsunamis in the near east to the hurricanes that devastated the Gulf states, to those millions in untenable poverty around the world, and most horrifically in Dafur, in Sudan, and to the many suffering right here in our own communities. Most people are unable to turn a blind eye to such suffering. Thankfully, most people are moved to some level of compassion for this suffering. I once read about a woman famous for being not just cranky, but a real you-know-what—a grouch. Once when she was walking with a friend to meet another woman for lunch, they passed a pan-handler who came up to her with his hand out, saying. “Lady, can you help me? I haven’t eaten in three days.” Without breaking step, she looked at him and snapped: “So, force yourself.” One can only assume that such a person has no faith, hope, or charity. To be skeptical is something we all can understand, even value, but to be unkind is going way far the mark. We move toward our day of national and familial Thanksgiving filled with thoughts of all great blessings that fill our lives. In so doing, we store up compassion for those who are not so blessed, which will serve us well as we are moved to charity for those in need, but I hope also, charity for those who need from us what is often far harder to give. As we gather with friends and family, old grievances are often brought to mind, and we find that our holidays bring with them resentments, and old wounds that have never healed. I remember Johnny Carson once said of Thanksgiving: People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year, And then discover once a year is way too often. Charity towards those with whom we feel anger, hatred, frustration, jealousy, despair, or whatever form the discontent or pain emerges is perhaps the greatest of all acts of charity, for we feel the most and must give the most if we are to get past them. My friends, we as a people of faith are called to grow our souls, to keep working toward a greater understanding of faith, hope, and especially love. May it be that as we give thanks for all that is good in our lives, that we are also able to give thanks for the good we might be able to do, as well; then truly our souls will grow in goodness and in love. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. So be it. |
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