Sunday, January 7, 2001

Rev. Annie Holmes

Wow, isn’t it great that the Holidays are over! I don’t know how you feel, but for me there is a great sense of a weight being lifted from my life? For me, there is almost a sense of something being completed.  But, however the Holidays went for you, happy or sad, good or bad, could there also be something else within us at this time of year, a pensive, almost preoccupied longing for answers of what the New Year may bring into our lives? But unfortunately, we must live in the mystery. For many, the month of January brings with it new chances, new possibilities or a new day dawning. January was named for the Roman god Janus, who was depicted with two heads, one facing the past and one facing the future. And, there always, the new year resolutions!

I realize many people don’t like to make New Year’s resolutions. And I know why…it’s because we make waaaaaay too many of them and then we never keep them and we feel badly. Or we make one resolution and it is so huge and potentially life-changing that of course we may feel good about it for a day or so and then in fear of failing we put it aside.  Are we missing a great opportunity, if we don’t look at our lives with new eyes and be resolute in our ideal of making a change?

Nelson Mandela in a speech soon after he was released from prison, I think summarized beautifully our fear of New Year’s resolutions and our continued anxiety about change. He said, as individuals we don’t fear so much our failures, as we fear deeply our power. Whoa, wait I said, when I heard that, I just assumed I was always more afraid of my failure, my shortcomings.  Could it possibly be that I am really more afraid of my power? Well where would our power lie, in the promises we make to others and ourselves. What have we promised ourselves?   What have we promised each other?  What have we promised the earth?

This is a great time of the year to climb into the cave our inner knowing and take a deep, long look at our power as individuals and the promises we have already made. Betty Reid Soskin reminds us, “The way to change the world is to be what we want to see.”  Change is an interesting concept, because we can be changed through our own will, and situations, events, and time all move our lives to where we either accept the natural movements of events, or we hide ourselves in denial; denial that we are growing older, that our children are growing up and moving away from us, that our grandchildren are growing up and moving away from us, that nothing in this life stays the same.

If we are to truly take advantage of the newness at this time of year, I believe there are few things we need to understand, groundwork we need to lay before we begin, in order to look at resolutions, or promises, if you will, with new eyes:  Eyes that may allow us to fulfill our promises, and realize in a unique way our power.

We have received who we are before we ever chose who we will become. As human beings our lives begin and never leave the soil of this earth that shapes us through blood, kinship, genes, culture, associations, social systems, networks of relationships, and extended communities. Even when we do not directly know the people whose lives are linked with ours, our lives unfold in relationship to theirs. Even when we feel we or others may have fallen short of the promises that have been made, we need to remember, Rebecca Parker tells us, we have inherited assurances/promises that may sustain us, even when some promises have been broken. We do not make ourselves. We are given the gift of life, the gift of the earth that sustains life and the gift of one another, here, now and in all the generations leading up to now.

I remember driving home to meet with my family for the first time after I was ordained a UU minister. Wow, I said to myself, I am truly free. I am the master of my life, the captain of my ship, the keeper of my soul.  I had beaten all the odds; I had done the impossible. I was angry and a bit vindictive. Where had my family been all those struggling years, I said to myself. I had done all this on my own. What part had they played in my journey? None I said angrily. Here I was a truly ordained minister. I had chosen, I proudly told myself, differently than all my siblings and done the unthinkable, at least in a Catholic household, as a woman I had been ordained!

What a shock I received when I drove into the driveway of my parents’ home. After not seeing my family for sometime, there were bumper stickers on their cars that read; “My karma ran over my dogma,” “Teachers do it with class,” and “If you want peace, work for justice.” At that time, my truck had the same peace and justice bumper sticker. When we met over jello salad, macaroni and cheese and homemade rolls, reminiscent of every church potluck I had ever attended, I looked around at their faces and was shocked. There was my younger brother who was a Catholic priest, my older sister who was a teacher and a social activist in her neighborhood, my older brother who played in a band and was a deacon in his church and my younger sister who was a nurses aide a choir director in her church. In many ways, as I watched them laugh and talk and interact, I was a part of them and they were in many respects an image of me.  I was seeing bits of myself and my dreams and hopes and desires and who I struggled to be in the world, already played out in their lives. We were all teaching, leading, in churches, musical, doing professions that cared for other people in the job description.  I had received from my background who I was long before I chose who I would become.

Now, it was at that point that I had a decision to make.  I could continue to be angry and annoyed at them for not being there for me, supporting me in my journey, or I could wake up and realize that growing up in that family already had given me what I needed to fulfill my destiny. They had already fulfilled what was promised, I needed to begin to rethink what the promises would be in the future.  I had been blind; I had been looking for right answers, but in the wrong place. My life, my family had been given to me, I did not make that myself, and that is the way it is. But what now…what now?  Exactly. 

____________________________________________________

Response to Reflection One…There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening, we shall hear the right word.

___________________________________________________

In order for me to stay in any kind of relationship with my family, I realized I needed to make new promises to them, and ask for a modified pledge from them.  You see, at that homecoming, after so many long, lonely years of struggle, pain, financial worry and at last success, I could choose…it dawned on me like a fog being lifted from my brain…I could choose to continue to be a seeker of what was good and right for me, recognizing how they had already been a help, or I could be a ranter, forever enraged that fuels a fire of hate and hopelessness that puts me into a place of despair.

I could dwell in that place of justifiable outrage that they hadn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t see that my dreams were important not only to myself but to the congregations that would soon be serving, OR I could get down on my knees and thank whoever runs the universe that I had been born into a family were the values of music, social action and the importance of church were already given me at a very young age and know that their very limitations could also be the very place of revelation - yes even surprise.

Let’s face it…in most of our lives we part of a great dilemma.  One of you may ask, how do I respond to my brother and his problems, another of you asks, how do I delicately answer the needs of my grandchildren without actually telling them what to do, and still another of you ponders, what is the best way to let people in my family, my work, my church know I will be there for them without depleting the energy I need for my own life.  And often we come very close to falling into the chaos of the dilemma of fulfilling the promises to ourselves, to those we love and to the earth.

___________________________________________________

Response to Reflection Two…

Certainly there is a right for you that needs no choice on your part.

______________________________________________________

I could be gracious with my family only because I had been true to what I knew to be right for me. I had not compromised or conceded where it mattered, but I had instead incorporated the best of my upbringing into what I knew was true for me.  In doing so I kept faith with the promise to myself, the promise to fulfill in my life my dream of being a leader in a church.

As a church we have made promises to each other, and this church community has made promises to each of you as individuals. These promises are based on strong liberal, religious, social activist foundation. To not continue with those promises of who we are to be in this city would be to break the covenant with those who came before us, who built this house we gratefully inhabit. In many ways it is exciting to think of what might be asked of us and what promises in 2001 and beyond we might fulfill as liberal religious people, if we take this task with seriousness and gave our lives to it.

Again, as this new year is upon us, we have a choice, we can rant about the past mistakes, pains and broken spirit, or we can lift our heads high in this year and vow that we will be courageous in our being seekers of the correct way to proceed into this church year.

As Unitarian Universalist we have evolved from the early radical Puritans and there is much for us to learn from their history. There was a time of their history that many of them made a conscious choice that led them to be our ancestors rather than a small, insignificant group of malcontents who could have been lost in history forever. They choose to be seekers rather than ranters and this is how the story goes.

The first great failure of Puritan covenantal life happened in 1649 in England. The Puritans had led a movement to reform English society, to end abuses of power of the King, and to advocate for land reform, prison reform, alleviation of poverty, unjust laws, burdensome taxes, debtors prisons, etc.  Fueled by the power of promises made to them, and the principles of free conscience, free speech, open debate and dissent, they rode a tide of high hope and put their love of freedom and the opposition to oppression to dramatic action.

In 1649 they won. King Charles was deposed and Cromwell came to power. But, as soon as he was in power, in order to make a stronger alliance with those in England interested in economic expansion, Cromwell moved to suppress the radical Puritans who had helped bring him into power. Two groups of Puritans who supported Cromwell were crushed; one group the Levelers, Puritans with a passion for reform and the Diggers, even more racial advocates of economic change, were imprisoned, silenced, and punished. These broken-hearted visionaries protested, implored, appealed, demanded that the covenantal commitments be honored, but they were squelched.

In the aftermath of that broken promise, separatists from the Levelers came to America hoping that a new land would provide greater hope. In England, two new religious movements emerged, the ranters and the seekers. The Ranters responded to the anguish of a broken covenant in an outbreak of rage. They evolved a revolutionary theology that saw evil and goodness as one, and viewed light and darkness as intertwined. When put in prison, they quickly recanted.  Brokenhearted, they held to no principles that were worth living or dying for. In other words, they gave up.

Another group emerged: they were called the Seekers. They were united in their sense of what they had not found. The Seekers saw that none of the current agendas was adequate to their present situation so they did the only thing they thought they could do in this desperate situation…they met in silence…they awaited a new revelation from the spirit, to help them make some sense of these mystifying depths. Rather than lapse into rage, they settled into a calm silence that kept the promise of faith they began to see that was beyond human understanding. They put a renewed emphasis on the Overwhelming power of God’s grace and the need for human stillness to sense the spirit’s motion. They watched and waited in the dark night of silence. One of these seekers was a young man named George Fox. It was amazing even to himself, that through the desolation and the despair of a broken covenant, he began to experience the presence of a spirit in his life, a spirit that he found could embrace even the violators of every promise with a fire of redeeming love, and this spirit he found sustained him in his seeking. He articulated this spiritual discovery with these descriptive words: “inward life did spring up in me.”

As you may have guessed this group of seekers became the Quakers. But an amazing thing happened in their transformation from being seen as only people of a broken promise, their new spiritual awareness not only transformed their inward life, it also radicalized their social vision.

As we contemplate this new year and the promises/resolutions, we may be toying with the realization the we have a choice, a choice of how to deal with our families of origin, our society, and in this church, we have a choice as the Puritans, to continue to rant on and rave on how we have been hurt and abused and therefore withdraw our energy and support, or we can claim for ourselves that, yes, at times promises get broken and we will be seekers after, as the serenity prayer tells us the wisdom to know the difference between what we can change and what we cannot. The path for each of us in this New Year begins often in the experience of promises failed, covenants broken, hope suppressed. Often it begins with disillusionment, deadlock and grief, and it passes through this fire to a new revelation. This is the path we need to follow to find a new heart in the New Year.

Let me offer you a simple new year’s resolution if I may; the experience of brokenness becomes the place of revelation; and in this new revelation found, there is what will be needed to fuel a new promise.

Let us make a promise with ourselves and with one another to seek for an ever-deeper awareness of that which springs up inwardly in us. Even when our hearts are broken by our failure or the failure of others cutting into our lives, even when we have done all we can and life is still broken, there is a universal love that has never broken faith with us and never will. This is the ground of our hope, and the reason we can be bold in seeking to fulfill the promise.

_____________________________________________________

Response three:

Place yourself in the middle of the steam of power and wisdom, which flows into your life. Then without effort, you are impelled to truth and to perfect contentment.