Grace
Sermon by Steve Edington
May 15, 2010
The poem was written by Jane Kenyon. The title is Otherwise:
I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise.
This poem was published in 1996, as part of a collection by Ms. Kenyon, titled Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. It was a posthumous publication. Ms. Kenyon died in 1995 from leukemia, one month short of her 48th birthday. She was living with her husband, the poet Donald Hall at their home north of here in Wilmot, New Hampshire. Ms. Kenyon was the poet laureate of New Hampshire at the time of her death.
Like much of Ms. Kenyon's poetry, this poem of hers needs little interpretation. It's about grace; that is, about finding gracious moments in what might be called the "profound ordinariness" of life; or the "ordinary profundity" of life, if we turn the phrase around. Such graceful times can indeed be amazing. One of the things that makes such times moments of grace is because we know, on some level, that they are only with us for--well--a moment; and then it will be otherwise. Indeed, Jane Kenyon wrote these words, knowing that "otherwise," in the most ultimate sense, for her was near at hand.
I've sometimes used the phrase "finding gracious moments" but, in truth, it is grace, more often than not, that finds us. Such, in fact, was the case behind the writing of best known "ode to grace," if you will, John Newton's well known hymn Amazing Grace. We'll move, then, from Ms. Kenyon (to whom we'll return later) to Mr. Newton.
Amazing Grace is an amazing song. I'm fascinated at how it has leaped out of the original religious context in which it was first written to take on a kind of universal dimension. It's probably the only hymn you'll find in the hymnals for both the Southern Baptists and the Unitarian Universalists. While it is considered a Christian hymn there is no reference in it to Jesus or Christ. There's not even a reference to God until you get to the fourth verse; and that verse wasn't part of the original version, and was not written by the original author.
One of the most enduring recordings of the song was done way back in the day by the folk and pop singer Judy Collins, who has no particular religious agenda I can detect. It became, again back when, a counter-cultural ode when Arlo Guthrie sang it at Woodstock and at many of his subsequent concerts.
What is it about this song that gives it a universal appeal, and even finds its way into our current UU hymnal? I'll see what light I can shed on that in offering my thoughts on how grace can be understood and experienced by religious liberals.
The story of how Amazing Grace came to be written is a good starting point and a good story, all by itself. It was by the aforementioned John Newton--born in London in 1725. He went to sea at age 11 with his father after his mother died. As he continued on with his life at sea, he became, by most accounts a real wretch; just not a nice person at all. One story is that his fellow sailors, on one voyage, actually complained to the captain about Newton's prolific and excessive swearing. Imagine that: A ship-full of sailors upset at a ship-mate's swearing. The guy must have been a world class cusser. Another story is that when he once fell overboard the crew refused to drop a life-boat to him. Instead they threw out a harpoon which he had to hold onto as the dragged him back on board. He was an accomplished enough sailor, however, that by the time he reached his 20s he was captain of his own ship; a slave ship, in this case, transporting captured Africans to America to be sold into slavery.
Then, in an account with "Jonah and the Whale" overtones, on one voyage Newton's ship, of which he was captain, came into a violent storm that no one on board thought they were going to survive. As he tried to steer his ship through it, and not knowing where he was or where he was going, Newton realized he'd come to one of those--to use some 12 step language--"let go and let God" moments. A moment when he realized that his life and his fate were no longer in his hands, that they were instead in the hand of a Power--or powers--greater than himself; and all he could do was to let life happen and then see what happens.
[It's similar to what a whitewater rafting guide, whose raft I was in a couple summers ago, said in a delightful southern West Virginia drawl as we approached a rather treacherous stretch of water: "Sometimes you just gotta let the river do what it does." I didn't take a whole lot of comfort in those words at that moment, but the guy was right. The river did what it did and we made it through.]
To return to Newton, the ocean storm also did what it did, the ship and crew survived, and Captain Newton had a religious conversion that resulted in his becoming Reverend Newton, an Anglican minister. The song he wrote, based on that seagoing experience, was quite literal in places, "I once was lost but now I'm found...(and) through many danger, toils, and snares I have already come...'twas grace that brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home." He knew what that was about. As Rev. Newton, he became a prolific hymn writer up until his death at age 82.
The original title of Amazing Grace, by the way, is not the one we now know it by. In accordance with how hymns were titled at that time, the song was first called "Faith's Review and Expectation." That doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "Amazing Grace;" and I can't imagine Judy Collins or Arlo Guthrie recording a song called "Faith's Review and Expectation."
Well, it's an interesting story, but what does it have to do with us, a--mostly--bunch of 21st century Unitarian Universalists. I'd like to touch on just a couple of things I think it means for us as religious liberals to live by grace.
One is to live with a basically trustful attitude towards life, knowing that we will at times also be betrayed by it. The other is to live with an openness to receiving the unexpected, and often underserved gifts of life that come our way, knowing that we also have to live with many "un-gift-like" times.These two attributes of grace I'm offering reach across and well beyond many beliefs and doctrines. You may or may not believe in God, or in a Power greater than yourself, and still live by grace in the manner I've just noted. Amazing Grace, to keep the song before us, speaks to many universal human experiences.
Who hasn't had a time of feeling lost, or out of sync with yourself and your world, and then have things pull back together? Once lost, now found. It is a universal human experience to be oblivious, or blinded, to certain aspects of ourselves or our world, and then been awakened to them: "'twas blind but now I see." Who hasn't had a fearful heart at times--and then, often through the love and care of others, had that fear relieved? And many of us, I would guess, have had life-changing experiences that come upon us and cause us to act, think, see, perceive, and believe in new and different ways for having had them. "How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed," or perceived, or saw something in a new and different light for the first time?
To pick up on that first point, to live by grace is to live with a basically trustful attitude towards life, knowing that it will also betray us at times. I continue to come back to theologian Sam Keen's term for this stance with he calls "trustful agnosticism." That is to say, the ability to trust and stay in the flow of life even if we do not know who or what it ultimately directing it.
Keen's metaphor for this stance, which I've often invoked, is a cartoon in which a cat escapes from an attacking dog by running out across a pond. As the cat runs across the water a series of lily pads come up to meet his feet, and he keeps going. But as soon as he looks down and starts worrying about where the next lily pad will be, he sinks into the water. Keen's take on it is, "You can't be graceful (that is, full of grace) while looking at your feet. Trust the happenings." Keen calls this trustful agnosticism since he (and I, too) do not know just who or what it is that ultimately sustains life, or keeps the lily pads coming. He just notes that to live by grace is to walk in and through life knowing that the sustenance will be there. That is living by grace, whatever one's theology or religious beliefs or spiritual practices may be.
I believe what Sam Keen says is true. And I also believe what a gentleman named James Hillman says in a book of essays he wrote on trust and betrayal called A Blue Fire. It's a counterpoint to Keen, a yin to the yang: "You cannot have trust without the possibility of betrayal...We are betrayed only where we truly trust--by brothers, sisters, lovers, spouses, not be enemies (or by someone you don't trust to begin with). Trust has in it the seed of betrayal. Trust and the possibility of betrayal come into the world at the same time...For we must be clear that to live or love only where there is trust, where one cannot be hurt or let down...means really being of harm's way, and so to be out of real life."
It took me awhile to get that, and I found myself, upon first reading, arguing with Mr. Hillman. What's wrong with always wanting to be out of harm's way? What's wrong with living and loving only where there is trust? The answer I finally had to give myself was, well there's nothing really wrong with any of it; it's just that life doesn't always work that way. To choose to trust, as Hillman quite correctly points out, is to accept the possibility of betrayal. To live by grace, then, is to walk through life with a stance of trust, knowing that the walk is not risk free; but believing that, by grace, the journey is still worth taking.
To close on this point, I never met or knew Jane Kenyon. I only know her through what little--I must admit--I've read of her work. But I have to believe that at times, and on some level, she had to have felt an ultimate kind of betrayal in knowing that her life would be taken from her before she even reached the age of 50. And yet she could still celebrate eating cereal with sweet milk and peaches, and walking with her dog through a New Hampshire wood.
The other piece of grace I'm holding up today is that living by grace means keeping a stance of openness and receptivity to the unexpected, and the sometimes undeserved, gifts that life can bestow upon us. Right about the same time I discovered the works of Sam Keen--whom I finally got to meet and study with for a week last summer--I also discovered the works of another theologian who, like Keen, did some of his early writing against the backdrop of the upheavals of the 1960s, Mr. Michael Novak.
Unlike Dr. Keen, Mr. Novak later shifted to the ranks of the neo-conservatives; which is his trip and I'll leave him to it. But in the early 1970s, Michael Novak wrote a wonderful and timeless book called Ascent of the Mountain; Flight of the Dove. It's long out of print, and a tattered copy remains on my shelf.
Try the title again: "Ascent of the Mountain; Flight of the Dove." It is Novak's metaphor for the religious or spiritual journey. It has stayed with me in the nearly 40 years since I first read it. Sometimes, often times, the life journey, the journey of the spirit, is like climbing a mountain--you work at it: probing, asking questions, seeking answers, despairing at times and hopeful at others; enlightened at times and baffled at other times.
But you keep climbing the mountain, working your way from one level or one landing to another--maybe having to backtrack at times when you're hurt or wounded, before you can get any higher. And then in the midst of all that climbing--usually when it's the least expected--comes the flight of the dove: The sudden moment of inspiration, the sudden sense of the gift-full-ness of life; the times when we look up from the climb, and across the terrain, and say, "yes, it is good to be here." It is in such moments of grace that we find our reasons to go on with the climb, with the ascent of the mountain--in the faith and in the hope that we will again, at some point, be blessed by the flight of the dove.
I'll close with this: Life both blesses and wounds us. We cannot prevent either one, and more often than not we do not know when either one is going to appear. We can only hope and trust that we have the strength and fortitude--drawing as well upon the strength and fortitude of those who love us most--to deal with the wounds; while, at the same time, cultivating the openness to receive the blessings and the times of grace that will come our way. To live by grace is to live with a basic stance of thankfulness and to trust the direction of the life we have each and all been given for as long as it is ours to have.
I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned for another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise.
Let's sing together Amazing Grace.
Stephen Edington
May 15, 2010
