Give Thanks To...?
Sermon by Steve Edington
November 20, 2005
Last Sunday's sermon was built around a couple of stories and references to World War II, which makes me a little hesitant to bring in yet another story from that time today; but not so hesitant that I won't do it. So if you'll indulge me one more time with a World War II story, I'll lay off for a good long time in the future. Some of you have heard bits and pieces of this one before, but I don't think I've ever put it all together in the way I'll do now.
This one is about a sailor who had joined the Navy following America's entry into the war. He'd never been more than 100 miles or so from the places he'd lived in the rural South before finding himself stationed on a Naval Base on the English Channel in the town of Plymouth. Being a devoutly religious fellow the sailor wanted to maintain his devoutly church going ways. He was a Baptist, but there were no Baptist churches within walking distance of his base. There was, he learned however, a Methodist Church he could get to by foot, so he figured that was the next best thing. He went to a Sunday evening service at the nearest Methodist church to where he was stationed. It was twilight when he entered the church; it was pitch dark when he came out. Plymouth was under a wartime blackout. No street lights were lit, no businesses could turn on their lights, and all house shades drawn, so as not to be a target for German bombs. Coming out of the church, the sailor couldn't figure out which way he had to go to get back to his base.
As he was trying to get his bearings he heard a woman's voice say, "I think that sailor is lost." She was right. The woman's name was Emily; she and her three daughters had also been at church. Emily approached the sailor and told him that if he wanted to walk along with them on their way home she could show him the way to his base, which was a little ways on beyond their house. He happily came along with them. When they came to the street corner where they parted Emily decided she'd do her bit for making the American servicemen feel welcomed in England by inviting the sailor to dinner the following Sunday. Military food being what it was, he gladly accepted. One dinner invitation led to another and the sailor became a regular visitor in the home of Emily and Bill Northcott. And it wasn't too long before the sailor and Emily and Bill's oldest daughter discovered a certain attraction for one another. The attraction became a love for each other, which led to their marriage in August of 1944 in the aforementioned Methodist Church. A year later they had a son, who, if you haven't guessed already is the guy telling you this story. When I said last Sunday that I am a child of World War II, that wasn't just a metaphor. I was speaking the literal truth.
I've heard this story ever since I was a little kid; the story of "How Mommy and Daddy Met" is part of the Edington family lore. My mother will be 80 on her next birthday and, no doubt at that time, the story will be told again. My father passed away many years ago but this story is part of his enduring legacy. Now, to give you an idea of the crazy leaps and bounds and connections my mind can sometimes take and make, I've been thinking about this story lately in light of this whole debate and conversation about "Intelligent Design" which is the latest version in the seemingly endless creation/evolution debate.
There's already a sermon presentation on this topic scheduled for one of the Sundays during my mini-sabbatical in January so I'm not going to get into the intricacies of the topic today. Very briefly, Intelligent Design advocates, if I understand their premise, hold that this universe of ours which includes the various intricate life forms on this particular planet, could not have all come into being by happenstance. There had to have been a "Designer" with a capital "D" behind it all, with an intelligently conceived, or pre-conceived, plan as to how it was all going to happen. I consider that premise to be an interesting philosophical and theological issue, but it does not, in my mind, constitute an alternative theory to the principle of evolution. But, as I say, I'll leave that be for now.
In thinking of this Intelligent Design issue I took it back to my father - or the man who would become my father - standing outside that Methodist Church over 61 years ago. Suppose he hadn't gone to church that night because he drew some kind of duty detail instead? Suppose there had been another church more to his liking that he went to instead? Suppose he'd had his bearings set well enough that he just walked back to his base with no assistance needed? Suppose Emily and her daughters hadn't gone to church that evening? Suppose, suppose, suppose, suppose... If any of those suppositions had been the case you most likely wouldn't be hearing this from me because I would not exist.
In any case there are two possibilities in all this: It was purely a chance encounter that put Emily Northcott and Gordon Edington in the same place at the same time; and then there was all that flowed from that encounter, including yours truly. Or there was some Larger Hand, or Force, or Designer, or God behind what brought them together because I was supposed to have been born in accordance with some larger Intelligently Designed Plan. I happen to come down on the "chance encounter" side of this issue. If dear old Dad had known where he was going that night be would not have ended up being dear old Dad - at least not dear old Dad to me.
Ah, but an Intelligent Design advocate would say, the very fact that you are here, and that you've a good and meaningful life for sixty years, and the fact that you have this marvelously constructed body (well, maybe not all that "marvelous" actually) - means that all of it couldn't have just come about by chance. It's all too amazing to have just happened; you had to have been a part of a larger Intelligently Designed Plan devised by a Grand Planner, as it were. And furthermore, this advocate would go on to say, if there was no such Design or Plan then how can your life have any meaning? If your life is the result of a random encounter, then isn't your whole existence just a random and meaningless one?
My answer is No, it's not; because it is how we live our lives and the choices we make in the course of living them that give our lives their meaning - and not whatever processes brought us into existence. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the life that's been given me to date. Part of that gratitude includes being thankful that my father was in - what proved to be for me - the right place at the right time. But, intriguing as the story is, I don't dwell on it all that much when it comes to counting my blessings; because the real blessings are contained in what later flowed from that chance encounter.
In those moments when life feels especially full to me, and when I can just say "thank you" for the life I have, that is all I need to say or feel. Who or what I'm saying "thank you" to doesn't really matter to me. I simply recognize that I am blessed by the workings of a cloud of mystery that I exercise only limited control over.
My guess is that I'm not making any kind of a radical statement in saying this to most of you. And yet on more than one occasion, as this season of the year approaches, I've had some of my more theistic friends, and even at times ministerial friends, say to me something like, "Well, Thanksgiving must be a pretty challenging time for you since you don't really have anyone to thank." It's usually meant as a good-natured joke, or a little bit of ribbing, and I (usually) take it that way. It's another of those UU jokes that I must admit I get a bit weary of these days. But it's one of those jokes with an edge to it. The edge is this idea that you're not really, and properly, celebrating Thanksgiving unless you're offering prayers of Thanks to the Supreme Being who has willfully and purposefully given you the blessings you have.
My counterpoint to that stance is found in some very wise words by the late Rev. Raymond Baughn - a Unitarian Universalist minister of many years - that have stayed with me over the years: "Giving thanks has nothing to do with who or what produced the gift. It is rather a way of perceiving our life. Even in the midst of hurt and disappointment, when we see ourselves in the universe that give us life and touches us with love, we praise." That sure works for me - thank you Raymond. My prayer of thanksgiving is my way of perceiving life - even when life hurts, wounds, disappoints, frustrates or angers me. Thankfulness is a way of perceiving life and seeing ourselves in a universe that gives us life and touches us with love. That is all I find I need to know in offering up my "cosmic thank-yous" as it were.
To Ray Baughn's words I add those of the 14th century German theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart who once said: "If the only prayer you say in your whole life is 'thank you' that would suffice." Eckhart was a Dominican priest who had to endure several charges of heresy over the course of his life for maintaining that one could experience the Divine directly, without intercessors - including the Church. The fact that the Church of his day considered this a heresy probably meant that Eckhart was speaking the truth. He was one of those persons who could see past the particulars of his own faith to the larger, universal truths that are contained within the particular: "If the only prayer you say in your whole life is 'thank you' that would suffice." Like Baughn, Eckhart is speaking more about an attitude or stance towards living than he is the content of a prayer, or about to whom the prayer is to be addressed. To simply, and profoundly, encounter one of those special moments of blessing in our lives is to offer Eckhart's prayer of thanksgiving.
There is one more thread of Ray Baughn's words I want to pick up on today before closing. He writes of being thankful "even in the midst of hurt and disappointment." Yes, hurt and disappointment are realities we come up against with as much, if not more, regularity than out Thank You moments. As I live in that push/pull between Eckhart's Thank You on the one hand, and the disappointment, frustration, and anger to which I referred a moment ago on the other, these are the truths I try to hold onto: However I may have gotten it, I am living the only life I have, during the only time that's been given me to live it, on the only Earth on which I have to live it, and in a country I still believe in for all the times it has disappointed and angered me - along with the times it has blessed me.
What other choice do I have, what other choice do we have, than to accept these truths and live with them and say "yes" to them? We are indeed aware of the unfinished and unhealed parts of our lives. We are also aware of the unfinished and unhealed parts of the world in which we live our lives when it comes to the persistence of war and oppression and injustice. If ours were not a life and a world and a country for which we could give thanks, then why would we even care about it all in the first place?
This was the message we wanted to give to our Church School children - as well as to you in the adult congregation - in presenting once again the work of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. For the UUSC, through its many programs and through its Guest at Your Table appeal, offers us both a way of celebrating our abundance and a way of extending the blessings of not only direct assistance to those in need, but the blessings of hope, justice and self-determination as well. I hope you will include this fine organization in your holiday giving in the weeks ahead. For we do have to live as thankful people, in order that we may go on living lives in a world for which we care deeply.
We are continually called - called by that which is greater than we know and whose name we do not know - to greater levels of wholeness, both within our own lives and in the larger life of humanity and nature of which we are all a part. It is, I feel, the ability to offer Eckhart's prayer that gives us the strength and the will to continue on our personal and shared journeys towards greater wholeness. To say "thank you" to the whole of life - however it all came to be - and to live with graciousness and hope in the face of all that denies graciousness and hope, is to truly live a life of faith; it is to be a bearer of life abundant.
To say "thank you" then, is not to approve all that's come your way or all that gets visited upon you. Rather it is to take what life does give us and then, using the will, the resources and the power of the human spirit - by drawing upon the divinity that is contained in each of us - we then become agents of transformation - transformation for ourselves, for those with whom we are here in community, and to a world that stands in need of our love and care.
We are now in a season whose themes are thanksgiving, ingathering, and harvest whatever ways we celebrate it over the coming days, I hope we can use some portion that time for reflection, for discernment, for re-commitment and for re-dedication. Let us reflect upon the content of our lives, and of the times in which we live them - as bountiful and as troubled as these times are. And let us be discerning as to what our "yes" and what our "thank you" to life means in these times in order that we may each play our part - however great or small that part may be - in transforming them. A Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving to each of you.
Steve Edington
November 20, 2005
