A Sure Thing Will Always Let You Down
Sermon by Steve Edington
February 4, 2007
It is good to be back with you on this first Sunday in February. I especially want to thank all of those who helped plan and lead our Sunday services in my absence. Our worship leaders over the past four Sundays were Burns Fisher, Harry Purkhiser, Mike Vose, and Laurie Goodman - with Laurie also leading the Joys and Concerns each Sunday. I want to thank in particular Arthur Reublinger for being the minister on call for January, and for his sermon on January 7th. Our other sermon speakers were Rev. Barbara Coeyman, Bruce Taylor, and Rev. Lee Page. I thank all of them as well.
Prior to my departure I had a few meetings with the worship leaders to get things all properly planned and in place. I left some worship materials - readings and such - for their use if they wished to use them. I contacted the speakers to make sure they knew which Sunday they were on, and to get their sermon titles for the newsletter. And then I re-checked everything with the worship leaders again. I like to think of myself as a pretty easy going guy. But I know full well that I can get downright compulsive at times. I just wanted to make sure that everything was securely nailed down before disappearing for a few weeks. So, no sooner do I get back, then I up and offer a sermon with the title "A Sure Thing Will Always Let You Down." I do it knowing that those who were entrusted with leading our services over the past four Sundays didn't let anybody down. From the reports I'm getting they each and all did excellent jobs.
The sermon title is taken from a line of a poem by Ric Masten. A many of you know I've spent most of the past month working on a book on his 40+ year career as a Unitarian Universalist minister, troubadour, and speaking poet. He and I got the idea for a book about a year and a half ago when Ric was here for a Sunday service and an afternoon performance as well, as part of a New England tour he was on then. To give you an update, I've got one chapter left to write for what will be eleven chapters altogether in this book of ours. A week before last I spent a few days with Ric and his wife, Billie Barbara, at their home in Carmel, California. We worked our way through the nine chapters I'd written at that point.
The most poignant chapter is the one we've titled "The Ministry for Which I've Been Preparing All My Life." It covers the time from February of 1999, when Ric was first diagnosed with what is now determined to be terminal prostate cancer, up to the present. He read a few of what he calls his "cancer poems" when he was here. The ministry to which he refers in the chapter's title is about his involvement with a variety of prostate cancer survivor groups and organizations on whose behalf he's made numerous appearances; and to the on-line - both the internet line and the telephone line - conversations and counseling talks he's had with his fellow survivors and battlers, the great majority of whom he's never met in person.
This is what Ric calls "the ministry for which I've been preparing all my life," and it has been a transforming experience for me to just learn about and write about this latest phase of his life. And at some point in my writing I realized that I wasn't just recounting someone else's story - important as that story is, and as much as it needs to be preserved. But I was also attempting to come to terms with how I, and perhaps by extension how all of us, deal with life's ultimate uncertainties.
Indulge me in a side note here for just a moment: In the past couple of weeks, as I was pulling this book and this particular chapter together, I learned that my long-time friend and colleague in the UU ministry, and one of our premier ministers, authors and spokespersons for liberal religion in general, the Rev. Forrest Church of New York City's All Souls Unitarian Church, is being treated for esophageal cancer. He and I come within just a few years of being the same age. Up until a few months ago, I'm sure Forrest was planning on taking his very fruitful ministry and writing career into retirement, continuing to write and speak, and staying on course as one of our country's major and more articulate proponents of liberal religion. And now that's all a matter of uncertainty.
So, between working with Ric Masten and seeing what's happening with Forrest Church - two of my Unitarian Universalist ministerial colleagues - well, it does, as the saying goes, give one pause. And it certainly brings into quite clear focus this matter of how we meaningfully live in the face of uncertainty.
As for Ric, he seems to be able - much of the time - to be downright jocular about this kind of uncertainty. One of the things I did when I was out his way was to meet with a few people at the UU Church in Carmel - where Ric and Bille Barbara have been members for most of their lives - to see if the church would host a publication party for the book, and for Ric and for me, about a year from now when we plan to have it out. They are happy to do so. I relayed all this to Ric when I met with him the following day for another of our working sessions, and his rather rueful response was, "Well, I guess this means I have to live another year." He said this knowing, of course, that ultimately it's not up to him (and certainly not up to me) whether he lives another year or not. But we continue to work on this book project as if Ric will be with us one year hence.
To move us along now I'd like to read the entire poem from which I took the lines for today's sermon title. The poem is called A Word for Survival and Ric dedicates it to a fellow cancer battler, a Mr. William Hoyt, Jr. - whose own battle has now ended. The word for survival, towards which this poem aims, is one coined as "spiritude." Here's the whole thing:
The man who coined the word
Had a terminal disease
A realist who knew that language
Strengthens, heals, and frees
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.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!
Okay, store that word "spiritude" somewhere up there in your hard drive for now, and we'll put it back on the screen a little later. (I have definitely been spending way too much time in front of a computer lately!)
"It's only in uncertainty, that true hope can be found; And you can bet a sure thing, will always let you down." Let's round up the usual disclaimers first and get them out of the way. Yes, we all have to have what I'll call "operational certainties" in place just to get us from one day to the next. When our service and coffee hour are over today I will - I'm reasonably certain of this - get in the same car I drove down here in, go back over the same streets I took to get here, enter the same house I've lived in for nearly 18 years, and greet my wife of nearly 29 years. Then, later in the day, I will watch the Super Bowl just as I have for almost all of the past 41 years. And the Indianapolis Colts will win said Super Bowl. (Okay, I'm not so certain about that one, but you get the idea.)
We would not be able to function if we woke up every morning to nothing but a maze, haze, and mish-mash of uncertainty. We know also, however, that even our operational certainties can get kicked out from under us at times - in ways that range from the merely inconvenient all the way to the painful and tragic and devastating. Indeed it is the sudden unexpected loss, the crises, the painful turn of events that remind us of just how fragile our operational certainties really are. The horrible loss of life and property in central Florida, due to severe storms and tornados over the past few days, is but one example of this. Many people in that area went to bed on Thursday night in houses that weren't there in the morning. And for some of them it proved to be their last night on earth. But fragile or not we need those operational certainties in place in order to just make it through the day, and from one day to the next.
So where, then, is the truth, which I believe is there, in Ric's lines that "It's only in uncertainty that true hope can be found?" The line is about believing you have the resources - from both within and beyond you - to deal with the kinds of uncertainties that are a part of the human condition itself. The truth of the line is especially found when life's ultimate uncertainty, the uncertainty about all that's involved in losing one's life, becomes real. But the line speaks to much more than just dealing with a cancer diagnosis. It's really about the attitude or the stance by which you walk through life.
Let me offer you one of my very favorite pieces of personal scripture that I hope will illustrate this point. It's from a book published over 30 years ago by the philosopher, theologian and therapist Sam Keen called To A Dancing God. I first read this way back when - in Billy Joel's words - "I wore a younger man's clothes," and it's stayed with me ever since:
"I remember an old cartoon. Sylvester the cat is running away from his ancient enemy the bulldog. Suddenly he sees that the only way of escape is across a pond. Without hesitating he runs out onto the water. So long as he remains unanxious, a lily pad arises to meet each of his advancing feet a split second before he would otherwise sink into the water. Suddenly he becomes alarmed, for although his feet have found support for the journey so far, he can see no visible means of support for the remainder of the trip across the pond. The moment he begins to worry about whether the next lily pad will appear on schedule he sinks into the water and the bulldog stands on the shore and laughs."
Dr. Keen then adds: "When I cease asking for guarantees that my feet will find secure ground, support appears for my advancing steps. The trick is to stop demanding certainty and trust in the ability of the self to respond creatively to whatever happens. You can't be graceful looking at your feet! Trust the happenings!"
Then Keen shifts into theology: "I define this position as trustful agnosticism. I accept my life as a gift to be enjoyed responsibly, but I remain ignorant about my ultimate context. I aspire to trust myself to the happenings which interweave with my energies to form an incarnate person." Then he concludes: "I am not uncomfortable in saying that my trust in the ultimate context of my life is vested in God, provided that the word 'God' in not used more than once a year and is then handled like the Ark of the Covenant."
That last line of Keen's refers to an ancient Hebrew practice and precept in which their name for God - Yahweh - was only to be spoken at a special observance around the Ark of the Covenant, and only once a year, so as not dumb down the word itself. Not a bad idea, I'd say. It's why I tend to shy away from God-talk myself. I believe in a power or presence greater than myself, which I don't mind calling God. But the word itself has become so stretched and so trivialized that I prefer to keep it to myself and only carefully bring it out on certain occasions. But that's just me.
Trustful agnosticism, as Dr. Keen describes it, pretty much describes my life-stance at this point in my life. It does provide for me the "true hope" that is found in uncertainty. I'll take it one step further and say that trustful agnosticism is my faith-stance. It is the way in which I live by faith, ironic as that may sound at first. For to live by faith is not the same thing as living with certainty. In fact it's just the opposite. Those who equate faith with certainty are self-deluded; and besides that, if you have certainty, then why do you even need faith?
Faith, as I see it, and as Sam Keen offers it, is really a choice to believe certain things about yourself, about others, about your world, and about whoever or whatever you may conceive Ultimate Reality to be. It is the assumptions, great and small, that you choose to live by. It is the choices you make in the face of all that is unknown, mysterious, and unknowable about life - the life you are living, and the life of the universe in which you live it. It is the choice, or choices, made with the full acknowledgement of uncertainty and doubt.
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 very well may let you down. As I said earlier, Ric and I work on this book as if we'll be celebrating its publication in about a year from now. This is an act of faith. Trust, by the same token, is the choice to live as if certain assurances are in place in the face of the possibility - if not the reality - that they may not always and ever be there.
To go back to the imagery of the Sylvester cartoon, it is when Sylvester the Cat looks down for the sure thing of the lily pad that he gets let down into the water. That's when he loses faith. Living by the faith of trustful agnosticism means walking on one's life journey with your eyes ahead, believing that the lily pads will be there and/or believing in your ability to create the lily pads if and when they run scarce. This is the kind of faith referred to in the poem I read earlier with these lines: "Fear - the silent assassin, Will bring you to your knees, While faith can pull Excalibur, From stubborn stones with ease."
Now that I'm back to that poem, A Word for Survival, I'll use it to close. The "word for survival," as you may remember, is "spiritude." Now you can put it back on your screen. It's a mix, or amalgam, of "attitude" and "spirit." Spiritude. Not bad. It's also what I take this trustful agnosticism I've been talking about to be - spiritude: A trusting attitude towards life guided by the spirit - call it the human spirit, the life spirit, the spirit of the universe, the spirit of God, whatever feels most authentic to you. That's one of the things we're about here - encouraging you, each one of you, to find and live our your personal authenticity. And I am sure of that.
Stephen D. Edington
February 4, 2007
