From the Bottom Up
Sermon by Stephen D. Edington
February 25, 2001
From the Bottom Up
Reading: From Tree and Jubilee by Rev. Greta Crosby.
Sometimes when the bottom falls our of our life, we are set free. We attain enlightenment, or an enlightenment of sorts: some perspective, some clarity, some sense of reality, some sense of dealing with things as they are, some relief from anxiety and perplexity because something profound has happened.
Whenever that profound thing happens, we can expect to go through a process, sometimes a long process, a painful or at least uncomfortable process, in which we let go of something and slowly learn to live again. This is true no matter what we lose: a loved one, a work, a hope, a vision, an image of ourselves, a part of ourselves. Loss makes artists of us all as we weave new patterns into to fabric of our lives.
Sermon
I know it's not wise to wish away even a day of one's life, as the time could well come when you'd wish you had it back, but that still does not stop me from wishing away whole months--like January and February. I realize there are a number of good things I'd miss if we didn't have them, like my son's birthday, the celebration of Dr. King's life, even Valentine's Day; but for all that they've never been my favorite months. They have a way of sapping my energy and spirit so that things that generally come easy for me tend to be more forced. All the snow and cold and flu we've had for the past several weeks have contributed to my January and February ennui. I still can't get the Christmas decorations out of our front yard for all of the snow, and that's really beginning to bother me. So I don't know if this is the best time or not for me to be thinking and writing and talking about loss, letting go, and regaining. Or, maybe it is.
As has happened on several other occasions, I'll pick a sermon topic weeks or months ahead of time and then have an event occur that brings it home. I lost a good friend a couple of weeks ago. His name was Jim. He and his wife, and, then, young daughter were very active in the UU congregation I served in Rockland, Maine in the early 1980s. They moved over near Peterborough, and became involved with the UU church there, about the same time we moved here to Nashua. We've continued our friendship over those years to the present day. Jim was about four years older than I am, and when I first met him over 20 years ago he was in the aftermath of a pretty serious heart attack. He recovered from it, took very good care of himself, pursued a rather vigorous, out-doors type of life, and was an avid bicycler. A little over a year ago he's taken a mountain biking trip to the Himalayas, no less. He and his wife recently purchased a new house, and they had Michele, Gordon, and I over to dinner to show it to us just after Christmas. Two weeks ago he went to get in his car to run a routine errand, and his heart apparently decided that was all the beating it was going to do, and he died suddenly in his garage.
Knowing and respecting Jim as I did, I don't think he'd mind my talking about his passing; he would admonish me to "just don't get sloppy and morose about it," so I won't. For all of the grief that was present at his memorial service there was also a pronounced element of joy at how the richness of his life had been such a blessing and an inspiration to those who knew him, both as family members and friends. Still, along with feelings of sadness and loss as well as appreciation for his life, what I experienced in equal measure were feelings of bewilderment and anger. This just isn't fair! Jim took good care of himself; and he and his wife had finally managed to get the house in the rural setting they'd long wanted where they could live out their days together; and he's gone. There was also a whiff--well more than a whiff really --of personal mortality mixed in with those feelings; he was, you'll recall my saying, only a few years older than I am.
Those feelings of anger and injustice were similar to those I felt when my father passed away at age 69. Because it was my father, they were even more intense. He and my mother struggled hard to raise their four children. He was finally able to retire with some measure of financial security. My sisters and I were all out of the house and on with our own lives, the house was paid for. It was time, finally, for my father and mother to get a little back for themselves after all they had given and sacrificed. Instead Dad died from a rare kind of brain cancer only a few months after it was first discovered. My Edington grandfather (my father's father), on the other hand, lived a quite active life until he was ninety years old--doing gardening on his small farm and seeing his grandchildren grow to adulthood. He quietly died in a room he'd built with his own hands. I remember wondering, following my father's death, how come he didn't get the years that his father did? Why didn't he get to tend his gardens and see his grandchildren grow up? This isn't right! As I say I felt some of that same kind of anger when I learned that Jim was gone.
Well, questions asked out of grief and anger are just that, expressions of grief and anger-- and they are legitimate as such. There's a part of us that knows quite well, I would say, that they are not actually questions for which there is some rational answer. We know that. As I got some reflective distance on my father's death (over 20 years ago now), and even on Jim's death from just a couple of weeks ago, I can ask the more pointed and realistic question: Why am I demanding that life be fair and just and always work out right? When I get into that mode of thinking I end up back at the Book of Job. Let's go there for a few minutes, and then I'll tie into Greta Crosby's words that I read earlier.
You don't have to be all that biblically literate to know about Job, largely because the theme of this folk tale is so universal in its dealing with the problem of suffering. Some Old Testament scholars point out that other versions of the Job story can be found in the writings of some of the other religions of the Ancient Near East. It's not unique to the Judaic and Christian scriptures. In the Old Testament version God and Satan (or "The Adversary" as the best translation puts it) make a wager as to whether a good, righteous, and prosperous man like Job can be pushed to the point to where he'll turn on God. So Job, inexplicably to him since he's unaware that he's part of a cosmic bet, loses all he has, including his children; and gets these horrible boils all over his body. He has three friends who visit him and give these long discourses as to why he's having to endure all he's enduring--none of which are much help. [You're getting the Cliff Notes version here; its really a quite long and very intricate story.] Anyway, Job finally cracks. Like the character in the movie Network, he gets "mad as hell and can't take it anymore more." He rails at God about the unfairness and injustice of all that has befallen him. And God answers Job through a whirlwind--which seemed to be one of the Almighty's main modes of communication in those days--and says, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the universe?"
As my own world-view became decidedly less theistic and more humanistic, and as I took an increasingly critical view of the Bible that had been central to my religious upbringing, I pretty much tossed that passage aside. I decided it was a cruel, heartless, and foolish God that was being portrayed there. I mean here's poor Job crying out at his terrible and completely undeserved plight, and all he gets from God, in effect, is "Look, I'm in charge here, so shut up and deal with it!" God is not one for feeling Job's pain in this story. I decided that was not a God I was much interested in. But at the same time something kept, and still keeps, bringing me back to that line even though I reject the theological context of the story itself. Is there some meaning I'm maybe missing in that question from a seemingly heartless God: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the universe?"
As I mull that one over, I get a rephrased message that goes like this: "Who are you, Steve, to be demanding, much less expecting, that life always be fair and just? Where were you when the foundations of life and the universe were laid? Nowhere, to be exact; and that's the point. Life can come to us in beauty and fullness, like the fullness of your grandfather's ninety years; and it can just as easily bring it cruelties and unexplained losses, just as it did with your father, and with your good friend. Yes, you can shape life... to some extent. You can choose and shape your destiny...to some extent; and you should celebrate the choices and opportunities you have to do all that. But you don't control life. It's ways were set in motion long before you showed up. It gives and it takes away. The challenge of living is being able to respond to what's given and what's taken. Like Joni Mitchell said, 'Something's lost and something's gained in living every day.'" Wow, all that from one little verse! As you can see, when I read the Bible I give myself a pretty free rein of interpretation--which is the only way I can read it.
I'm reminded at this point of my oft used definition of religion by Rev. Forrest Church: "Our human response to the dual reality of being alive and knowing we will die." There are other equally good definitions, but that one works well for me. Religion is that ongoing process by which we respond to life, knowing we won't have it forever. This is closely aligned with what Dr. Church also has to say about God. He writes, in his latest book Lifecraft: "The word 'God' is nothing more (or less) than a sign pointing to an ultimate reality that finally can be neither named or known." That pretty close to what Emily shared with us last Sunday about her own religious journey and her understanding of agnosticism. Responding to life, knowing we don't have it forever; and seeking a reality that finally can be neither named nor fully known--this is the essence of the religious and spiritual journey much more than subscribing to a prescribed set of beliefs or practices. An integral part of that response and of that search involves coming to terms with loss.
On this note, let's turn to that little meditation by Rev. Greta Crosby. It is one of my personal liberal religious pieces of scripture. In just a few short sentences she writes in a positive and life-affirming way about living with loss, and about when you're having to look at life from the bottom up. On first reading, however, I can imagine one saying, "Hold on Greta, when the bottom falls out of my life I feel confusion, and fear, and grief, and a loss of direction. What is this enlightenment, clarity, and perspective you're talking about? Are you sure your name isn't really Pollyanna?" I can't say for sure how she would respond to such a question, but I can back up a bit and then come at it myself--in a way similar to what I did with the passage from Job.
If I were to ask most of you what it means to have a positive, forward-looking, successful stance toward life, I imagine the answer would be along the lines of being able to see possibilities for oneself and being able to act on them. It would mean trusting and believing in your ability to both take care of your most basic needs and fulfill at least some of your wants. Whether or not we like to admit it, we measure in large part what we call "success," and even our sense of self-worth by what we gain, what we get, what we acquire. The gain may be either through our own efforts, or just plain good fortune, or--as is most often the case--some combination of the two. I'm not just talking about material gain here either. There are also the more human and intangible gains like a good family life, a good circle of friends, the respect of your peers, some inner peace, and a connection--however you may make it--to some larger meaning or purpose to life itself; to that which, as Forrest Church puts, cannot ultimately be named or fully known. Whatever one's economic station in life may be, these are the kinds of gains I believe all people need. They're necessary for a meaningful life.
Now, alongside all of this "life as good gains" business, I'll introduce the counterpoint. I think it is equally healthy and equally necessary to recognize life as a series of losses. Some of these losses can be fairly easily accepted; and others will come as cruel, tragic, inexplicable, and unfair. Some 15 years ago Judith Viorst wrote a book called Necessary Losses, and it has become another of my texts for life. I find myself turning to it a little more frequently these days than when I first purchased it shortly after it came out. I'm not going to get into it now, except to say in very broad terms its about the things one needs to let go of, and be willing lose, in the course of the life cycle in order for one's life to be reasonably whole. Being able to let go, and to accept loss, is as valuable for our ongoing well being as is being able to reach out, and take hold, and make gains.
I know that's hard to do because loss, the prospect of loss, and the prospect of having to look at life from the bottom up now and then, is kind of scary. I think this is why there's a certain kind of discomfort that's often experienced in being around people who've taken some hard licks. I've had more than one person tell me how losing a job, and being unemployed for a stretch of time, was not only tough enough to deal with in and of itself, but how some of their friends would come to act differently around them. There would be an certain wariness or uneasiness in their presence. It wasn't that those friends were necessarily fair weather companions, but that the prospect of loss was personally unsettling to them; i.e. this could happen to me, too. On a weightier level, I recall a line from the journal of a terminally ill person who wrote, "I never knew what fear was until I looked into the eyes of the people who were looking at me." Such reminders that life takes as well as it gives can be, and often are, frightful.
So what Greta Crosby is trying to do with this little meditative piece is to take what is fearful and unknown and say that it is ultimately life-enhancing. Not right away, to be sure. Recall that she says, "When that profound thing happens we can expect to go through a process, sometimes a long process, a painful or at least uncomfortable process in which we let go of something and slowly learn to live again." In those few words she describes the life dynamic that runs alongside our gains and accumulations: Letting go of something and learning to live again. In the case of a loved one it does not mean you let go of the love or affection or appreciation your felt for that individual. It means, instead, letting go, over time, of enough grief so that you can re-engage with life again.
As Rev. Crosby goes on we see that she is not just writing about death. Her words again: "This is true no matter what we lose: A loved one, a work, a hope, a vision, an image of ourselves." Of course, we have to have dreams; we have to have hopes and visions for ourselves; we need to be able to imagine the lives we want and aspire to. To not do so is to not be human. Loss is experienced when the truth comes home that certain things are just not going to happen. Some vision or aspiration you had for yourself is not going to happen. In all likelihood this does not mean there is something wrong with you; only that you need to learn to let go of a particular lost hope or dream in order to learn to live again with both a present and a future in which you can continue to believe. It's far from easy, this kind of letting go, but it can also be, as Greta wisely notes, a freeing experience; free to be, in her words again, "artists...as we weave new patterns in the fabric of our lives.
In the immediate aftermath of any kind of loss we may not be able to hear at first what Ms. Crosby is saying about being set free, and about attaining enlightenment, clarity, dealing with things as they are, and relief from anxiety. All those things she refers to in the opening lines of her mediation about what happens when the bottom falls out. I believe what she's doing is holding these things up as a promise or as a possibility of what can eventually come if we take life's losses along with its gains; and allow the losses to inform us about who we are and what we can yet become.
I mentioned at the beginning of these remarks that this is the time of year when I experience a certain loss of spirit and energy. In a somewhat self-indulgent way, writing out these thoughts has been my way of working through that low-ness. I can also tell you that my spirits are lifted today by two simple truths: There are only three days left of February, and spring training is underway! I bought my Red Sox tickets last week. This could be the year.
My other sustaining affirmation goes something like this: All of our gains and losses are, I believe, part of a larger mystery of living which we may not fully comprehend, but with which we still keep faith. The current interim minister at the Peterborough Church graciously invited me to take part in Jim's memorial service a week ago yesterday. I used a reading by a UU minister, the late Rev. James Baughn. I'd like to use it now to bring these thoughts to a close. Ray Baughn: "We belong to the eternal here and now. We did not begin when we were born; our origin goes back to the beginningless beginning of all things. Our story is the story of earth, and sun, and humankind.... Something eternal is revealed in everything. Our minds and bodies are mosaics of the same unknown that underlies the light, and the stars and the sea. We do not fully know what it is, but we live it and we call it Life. We belong to the Oneness from which we have emerged."
What Rev. Baughn is telling us here is that our lives are a part of a larger chain of Being, whose meaning we may never full grasp. As he puts it, "We do not know what it is but we live it and we call it life." True indeed. It's also true that we do get some occasional glimpses as to what it is as we live it. Some of those most revealing glimpses occur when we are able to return to life after feeling cut off from it, when we become the artists that loss compels us to be, weaving new pattern into its fabric. The joy is the discovery that life is still there and we are one with it again. Perhaps that is the enlightenment of which Greta Crosby speaks: That having lived the loss we find that life is there to bless us again, and will allow us to love it again.
