No Such Thing as a Sure Thing
Sermon by Steve Edington
January 9, 2011
Last Sunday I mentioned that Michele and I had spent a very enjoyable week with my family in Charleston, West Virginia between Christmas and New Years; the family in this case being my mother, my two sisters and their husbands - and a nephew. (A third sister, and her husband, live in Texas - which was a bit far for a Christmas visit). My father passed away several years before I began my ministry here. The night before the flight Michele and I had to get us back to Manchester and Nashua, the whole crowd of us gathered for a Chinese take-out dinner at my mother's condominium. Once we'd properly stuffed ourselves and were finishing off coffee and dessert, my mother came out with a large manila envelope with a lot of old and quite worn pieces of paper in it, and said she had some things she wanted to show us.
It was a pretty amazing collection that she laid out on the table. It was all this stuff she'd saved - and that I didn't know she'd saved - that had to do with her and me getting into this country from England, by way of the Queen Mary, in February of 1946. Mom was 19 years old and I was all of six months. Many of you have already heard the back story on this. In brief, my mother was a British war bride - as in World War II - and my father, who grew up in rural West Virginia, served in the United States Navy. They met in Plymouth, England, got married in August of 1944, and I was born a year later on August 23 of 1945 just as the war was ending. Technically speaking, therefore, I missed being a baby boomer by four months and one week. The "official" start of the boomer era--as decreed by those demographers who decree such things--is set at January 1, 1946. So don't blame me for putting the Social Security system in peril, along with all the other things the post World War II boomer generation seems to be getting blamed for lately.
To get back to my mother's table in the waning days of 2010, what she had saved--going back sixty-five years, was all the documentation she and my father had to deal with to get the two of us - my mother and me - on the boat, across the ocean, and into the United States. Dad couldn't travel with us since he had to return to the United States with his Navy unit so he could be formally discharged. There were regulations as to how much baggage Mom could bring - including a diaper limit - and a signed and sworn statement by my father demonstrating that he could support the two of us when we arrived in this country. Indeed, Dad did attest to having a job waiting for him in southern Ohio that would pay him the whopping sum of $114.00 a month. Mom had even kept these mimeographed daily newsletters that were run off for the passengers on the five day voyage. They were faded to the point of barely being readable, but fascinating nonetheless.
I could, in fact, easily devote the remainder of this sermon to the all contents of that envelope; but some other time for that, maybe. As we passed those fragile and faded pieces of paper around the table some ten days ago, it called up for me thoughts I've had many times before when it comes to...well, when it comes to my existence. These thoughts mostly have to do with what a leap into the unknown my mother was taking. My mom is a very small woman. She's been here a few times and some of you have met her. I doubt she's ever weighed much over a hundred pounds at any time in her life. But, even as she now approaches her 85th birthday, she's anything but frail, and never has been.
Really, it knocks me out that an 18 year old young woman, who had never been more that 50 miles from her English home - and who had never lived anywhere other than in her family home - would marry a 34 year old American sailor with an eighth grade education, whom she'd known less than a year, have his kid, set off on a 3000 mile ocean voyage to live in a country she knew nothing about and become a part of a family, all of whom were complete strangers to her. (If she hadn't done all that, of course, you folks would be listening to someone else up here this morning.)
I have asked her about all this a few times; and while I haven't put it in these exact words, my question to her, in essence, has been, "Good God, Mom, what were you thinking!?" As I say, to put it that way would mightily tick my mother off, so I do find ways to put it more diplomatically. No matter how I put it, though, I always get the same, almost offhand answer: "I was in love with your father; and there was a big war on. Nobody really knew what was going to happen or where things were going to go - so I went for some adventure." I don't know if raising four kids in a hardscrabble southern West Virginia setting was exactly what she had in mind when it came to going for adventure, but she got it anyway.
I can see how, with all the uncertainties that such a catastrophic war brought on, especially for young people who were feeling its effects directly - and my mother saw bombs fall on her city of native city of Plymouth - there probably was a sense of the moorings slipping loose; and the sense to go for whatever you feel is out there for you and see where it leads. You might as well. I think that was probably how it looked to eighteen year old Margery Northcott in 1943-44.
Many years - several decades actually - after I'd come to know my mother's story, I encountered some lines in a poem by the late Rev. Ric Masten that I felt spoke to her story pretty well: "It's only in uncertainly that true hope can be found; and you can bet a sure thing will always let you down." My mother did place her personal hopes in a lot of uncertainty, and in a way our post-Christmas gathering was for her a confirmation and an affirmation that opting for uncertainty was the right move for her. She was, as we all could tell, quite proud--and justifiably so--of her story.
While Rev. Masten's words, for me, do make me think of my mother's life choices, Ric wrote them out of a very different kind of story he was living when he put the words to paper; and we'll turn to that now. The poem in which the lines are contained is called A Word for Survival which Ric wrote shortly after he was diagnosed with an inoperable form of prostate cancer. Another quick back story here for those not familiar with Rev. Masten and my connection with him: From the late 1960s until his death nearly three years ago Ric was a UU troubadour minister, poet, and songster, working and traveling from his life-long home in Carmel, California--where he was once named that city's poet laureate.
His best known, signature song is Let It Be A Dance, and it is in our hymnal. Shortly after a presentation he did here in our church in the fall of 2005--his last East Coast tour as it turned out--Ric and I decided to collaborate on a book about his life, and his very unique ministry, within our Unitarian Universalist movement. I managed to get it written and published two years later and we had a wonderful book launch party at his and his wife, Billie Barbara's, home UU Church in Carmel in January of 2008.Ric died five months later in May of that year--some nine years after getting his initial cancer diagnosis.
A Word for Survival is one of several poems cited in the chapter in this book about how getting his cancer diagnosis changed the nature and tone of Ric's ministry. We titled the chapter "The Ministry I've Been Preparing for All My Life." I'll read a few lines from the poem now, and return to some more of it later:
Fear--the silent assassin, will bring you to your knees
While faith can pull Excalibur from stubborn stones with ease.
The outcome of any illness is never absolute,
No matter what the odds are the end is always moot.
It's only in uncertainty that true hope can be found
And you can bet a sure thing will always let you down.
With respect to those last two lines, which I've now recited twice in the past ten minutes or so, I guess I should take a time out long enough to round up the usual caveats and get them out of the way. Yes, we all have to have what I'll call "operational certainties" in place in order to just to get from one day to the next. When this service and coffee hour are over today I can say with a very high degree of certainty that I will get in the same car I drove here in and return to the same house in which I've lived for over 20 years; a house I share with my wife to whom I've been married for over 30 years. We would not be able to function if we were to wake up every morning to nothing but a maze, haze, and mish-mash of uncertainty--as if all the parts of our lives that were in place when we went to bed the night before were no longer in place in the morning. I get that.
What I also get, and what we also know, is how tenuous and fragile those operational certainties--necessary as they are--can be. It's a tenuousness that can range from the merely inconvenient (like maybe I'll get a flat tire on the way home) all the way to the painful, tragic, and devastating. Indeed it is the sudden unexpected loss, the crises, or the painful turn of events that remind us of how tissue thin those operational certainties can be at times. Fragile and thin or not, however, we need those operational certainties in place in order, as just noted, to simply make it from one day to the next.
So where, then, is the truth in Ric's lines "It's only in uncertainty that true hope can be found, and you can bet a sure thing will always let you down."? Paradoxical as it may sound, those few lines constitute a profound statement of faith. Yes, a statement of faith. Go back from these lines in the poem to some that precede them few lines earlier: "Fear, the silent assassin, will bring you to your knees; while faith can pull Excalibur from stubborn stones with ease." Using some King Arthur imagery, as in pulling the Excalibur sword from the stone, Ric gives us faith as the opposite of fear and as the opposite of certainty. He puts in a good word for faith and then goes on to say "a sure thing will always let you down." That could come as a surprise for those who equate having faith with having a sense of certainty. I'm with Ric, though, in regarding faith as the opposite of certainty. I'll explain it this way:
While I was not personally raised in a strictly fundamentalist religion--it was very conservative, but not quite fundamentalist--I still grew up in a culture where Christian fundamentalism was very strong and pronounced. What I came to see once I was able to take a few steps back from that milieu and view it from some objectivity, was that fundamentalism--whatever "brand" of religion it may appear in--is essentially a religion of fear, insecurity, and uncertainty. It is a clinging, a kind of desperate clinging, to a literal truth of the Bible--or whatever text one may take as sacred; or a clinging to a specifically delineated set of "God's truths," largely out of fear of what terrible things might happen should one lose, or even loosen, his or her grasp.
I won't go so far as to say that this is the case for every single person who considers him or herself a fundamentalist. But when I see someone who has to be so insistent that he or she has the unadulterated truth, as summed up in rote precepts, I have to wonder what's behind such insistence. And usually, somewhere deep down, is a deep uncertainty that maybe I don't have it all locked up after all; but rather than admit that I'll keep on insisting on my possession of the complete truth, and I'll congregate with others who feel the same way so I'll feel reinforced in my certitude.
Far be it from me, however, to tell someone they shouldn't have such a stance; it's just that in such a stance I see no real or honest faith at all. Who needs faith, after all, when you have certainty? I happen to think that kind of certainty is really an illusion, while also knowing that those living by such illusions--as I'm calling them--don't really care what I think; but that's OK.
Faith, as I've come to understand it--and as Ric is using the term in this poem of his--is a willingness to live with uncertainty, to live with the knowledge that an alleged "sure thing" may well let you down at times. It is a willingness to live with mystery and with the unknown, while also trusting in one's abilities to meaningfully probe at mystery and at the unknown, discovering and living out what one can, while still knowing that you'll never quite get the whole thing. In addition faith is the choice to live as if certain things are true in the absence of sure knowledge--in the absence of the sure thing that may well let you down. I go back to my work with Ric as an example.
In January of 2007 I spent about a week with him at his home in Carmel working on some of the still unfinished parts of our book about his life and ministry. While I was there I visited the UU Church in Carmel to see if they would host the publication party one year hence--in January of 2008; the one I mentioned earlier. I figured, correctly, that that would give us enough time to get the book completed and published. The Carmel UUs were good to go with the idea, even while they were in the process of calling a new minister. When I passed the news on to Ric, just as I was getting ready to head home, his somewhat rueful response was, "Well, I guess this means I'll have to live another year."
We continued working towards the completion of the book. With the enthusiastic support of the minister the Carmel UU Church called, we planned the party, as if both were going to happen--publication and party. We made it with five months to spare. As noted, RIc died in May of 2008. When I think about the many things the phrase "journey of faith" can mean, one of the things I recall is those 12 months from January of 2007 until January of 2008, with their mixture of uncertainty and hope, knowing that we couldn't bet on a sure thing. In this case the hopes were fulfilled.
I'll make one more pass at the poem we've been exploring before wrapping it up for today. Remember, the title is A Word for Survival. I haven't told you, yet, what the specific "word" is that Ric offers. The poem, taken in its entirety, is a tribute to a man Ric met as a fellow cancer battler and, for a time, survivor. His name was William Hoyt. By the time Ric wrote the poem Mr. Hoyt had passed away. Here's the part of the poem where Ric writes about his late compadre, Bill Hoyt:
He fought the 'Big C' monster with spunk and attitude
Another cock-eyed optimist you should not conclude.
So like the fallen colors I've taken up his word
And shout it from the hill top 'till the echo can be heard.
He was no Pollyanna; his word no platitude
To things considered saccharine he could be abrupt and rude.
In the present day vernacular he was a righteous dude.
Let's hear it for the man who coined the word "Spiritude!"
That was Ric's, and Bill Hoyt's, word for survival: Spiritude. It's a mix or an amalgam of the words "spirit" and "attitude." Spiritude. Not bad. It speaks to a life stance one can take knowing that hope is found in the ability and willingness to live with uncertainty; and that a sure thing can let you down. It's the same stance I've referred to in other sermons as "trustful agnosticism;" that is to say a willingness to live in the flow of life, and trusting in the direction of that flow, and trusting as well in one's ability to steer your way through that flow--without complete, and ultimate, and once-and-for-all final answers as to what the flow is all about or exactly where it is going. Trustful agnosticism.
Spiritude. It's a trusting attitude towards a life guided by the spirit. Call that spirit what you will: The human spirit, the life spirit, the spirit of the universe, the spirit of God--whatever feels the most authentic to you. For that is one of the things we are about here--encouraging you, each of you, to find and live out your personal authenticity on the strength and force of your own spiritude. And I am sure of that.
Stephen D. Edington
January 9, 2011
