The Glow of Sunset

Rev. Mark Stringer

First Unitarian Church of Des Moines

5/26/02

 

 

 

Reading (the words of Tess Gallagher)

“It is important that we be strengthened by the wisdom of our grievings.  The scientists may tinker, the politicians may instruct us in the various ploys of unconsciousness, the physicians may delay death awhile with yet another cure, but, until each individual maintains a responsible relationship to his or her own losses and changes, there will be no such thing as a hopeful future.  For, as in the Taoist description of the wheel in terms of the strong, empty spaces between the spokes, one’s future depends not only on the visible spokes of the present, but also on those invisible elements from the past, those things we are missing, are grieving for, have forgotten and left behind, so that they may be recovered.”[1]

 

Sermon

This past Wednesday I gathered with other Iowa UU ministers for our monthly collegial meeting.  During these meetings, we share news from our lives and from the churches we are serving, we exchange ideas and offer support.  I mentioned to one of the ministers present that I was planning to speak about death this morning, and with a twinkle in his eye, he responded, “Will you speak for it or against it?”

 

He was just having fun with me; yet, I have thought a lot about his question since he posed it.  Am I for death or against it?

 

Seems strange to imagine being “for” death.  Particularly when death can strike so suddenly…and unmercifully, as the families and friends of those who went to work in the World Trade Center on a sunny September morning could attest.  Or for those who have experienced the death of a child or who are mourning the loss of someone who had not yet had the opportunity to live what we would call a “full life.”  Death in these cases is an unwanted guest, pillaging our expectations, our hopes, and our dreams.  How can we be in favor of death when it can seem so cruel and indiscriminate?

 

Even when death arrives as a welcomed reality for folks who have suffered from a long illness or for people who have chosen it as a way out of painful life circumstances, death always leaves an empty space for those left behind.  An empty space that will never again be filled the way it once was.  An empty space that will remain as a persistent reminder of not only the person no longer with us, but the finite nature of our own lives on this earth.  To be for death, therefore, is to be for empty space, for loss, for grief.  How can any of us be “for” death?

 

And yet, to be “against” death is clearly a futile endeavor.  No amount of protest or preparation will forestall the inevitable.  From the time we are very young, we begin to grapple with the knowledge that our lives and the lives of those we love will one day end.  And the circumstances of our lives continue to demand that we consider our ultimate destiny.

 

There is a story from the Buddhist tradition that makes this point well.

“Long ago in India a young woman had a baby.  She loved the child as dearly as life itself. One day the child sickened.  Her condition worsened until she died.  The mother was beside herself and refused to accept the death of the child.  She ran to all the healers in her village, begging them to give her a potion, something to bring the child back to life.

Finally she came before the Buddha.  He looked at the dead child and then at the mother. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I can make you a potion to bring this child back to life, but the ingredient required to do it is very hard to procure.’

‘I’ll get it,’ she cried.

‘Bring me a mustard seed!’ he said.

‘A mustard seed!’ she interrupted,  ‘That will be easy.’

‘A mustard seed,’ he went on, ‘from a house that has not known death.’

The woman hurried off to the nearest household.  ‘Please,’ she begged, ‘I need a mustard seed for a potion that will bring my baby back to life.’  The people ran for their mustard seed supply.  As they handed it to her she remembered the condition. ‘Your household has not suffered any deaths, has it?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes, we lost both of my parents in the last three years,’ came the reply.

The woman hurried on to the next house. ‘A mustard seed!’ she cried, and it was brought.  Then the question, and the answer: ‘Yes, I lost my husband but three months ago.’

To the next house, and the next, and at each house her question was met with the same answer: ‘Yes, we have known death.’

Finally the woman stopped and looked at her child.  Her child was dead, like many of the other people who had been lost in her village.  The pain was rising in her like a terrible storm, but she knew now that she must let it come.  Losing and suffering are as common to people as a mustard seed is to cooking.  She returned home and began her grieving.”[2]

 

I appreciate the story of the mustard seed because it reminds me of my own first experience with death.  The spring of my junior year in college, my mother died and left my family in a disheveled heap of confusion and sorrow.  A week or so after the memorial service I was eating in a restaurant with my father.  Neither of us was saying much.  I can’t speak for my father’s mental state, but I know I was busy meandering down an internal trail of questions and pain that seemed to have no end.  I was working very hard at feeling sorry for myself and for my father, and especially for my mother.   Then, I heard snippets of a conversation from the booth behind us that stopped me in my tracks.  “I can’t believe she’s gone,” a young voice uttered.  “The service was beautiful,” an older man said.  Suddenly my internal trail of grief began to widen and I could see others who were traveling with me, others who were also feeling the loss of someone they had held dear. It was an important realization for me to make…and not a moment too soon.  There in that restaurant, at a time when I was feeling most alone, I realized that others were walking with me.  It did not matter that these people were strangers. We were walking the same path and that was enough.

 

The universality of death does not make it any less stunning or painful when we are left with the empty space of a life that is no more.  Anytime we face the death of a loved one, there is pain to endure, and grief to absorb. But the universality of death does have much to teach us, even as we are caught in its grip.

 

In fact, I now recognize the moment in the restaurant as a religious experience.  Not because I felt the hand of a supreme being or because I had a vision of my mother in heaven.  The moment was religious for me because I was able to catch a glimpse of that which is both a part of me and a part of the mystery of existence itself-- the struggle to come to terms with the dual reality of being alive and having to die.  This paradox of life and death is at the foundation of the human endeavor we call religion, and whether spoken or unspoken is an integral component of any religious service.  Which is probably why when I mentioned to church member Sally Boeckholt that I intended to speak about death this morning, she responded, “How is that different from any other Sunday?”

 

Sally, of course, is right.  Each Sunday morning as we meet for our ongoing celebration of life, we are compelled to consider our impending death.  Indeed, one of the greatest mysteries about the fact that we are alive is that we will one day no longer be.  Perhaps liberal theologian Henry Nelson Wieman put it best when he wrote, “When…[we] become sufficiently mature to apprehend the deeper meanings…[we] begin to die. The glow of life is always a sunset glow.”[3]

 

I appreciate Wieman’s analogy of life to a sunset, because a sunset is not the absence of light, but a grand reminder that the light is temporary…that it will not always be.  A sunset is our reminder to appreciate the sun… even as it is setting…even as it disappears from view, leaving behind the colorful streaks of the day that was.   Likewise, each death we endure, is another streak in the sunset of our own lives…another reminder that we will not always be…another reminder to appreciate and to fully inhabit each day of our living. 

 

In my youth, sunset played an important symbolic role.  As the orange ball sank into the buildings and trees, I would know that my time to enjoy the day was fading away as well.  A mixture of sadness and panic often filled my little boy body as my friends became enshrouded in the orange glow.  Soon, I knew, their faces would soften and blur in the growing darkness.  Soon, I knew, the streetlights would fire, bathing the neighborhood in the eerie artificial light that was my signal to say goodbye to my playmates…another day past.

 

Now that I am older, and my schedule is not as dependent on the natural rhythms of light and darkness, it can be more difficult to remember to appreciate the setting sun.  And yet, the more I consider the glow of my life as a sunset glow, the more I appreciate the sunset moments all around me. 

 

For example, my wife Susan celebrated a birthday this past week. We kept the party simple, just the two of us.  I grilled a dinner as the sun set.  Just before dinner was ready, the phone rang.  It was her parents calling, each on a different phone, singing together…probably a little off-key…but with the parental gusto they have always exhibited on the anniversary of their daughter’s birth.  Susan chatted with them for a few minutes, and when she got off the phone, she confessed that she had heard their singing differently than she had in the past.  As those two familiar voices bobbed and weaved through the melody of “happy birthday” Susan acknowledged that these voices would not always be able to serenade her this way.  She said that as they playfully sang “little Susie” she could see young parents proudly holding their newborn child, she could hear the years of their lives together transmitted through their cellular phone.  She could hear the sunset.

 

“The glow of life is always a sunset glow.”

 

A few years back, soon after beginning my internship at the Unitarian Church of Evanston, I had the privilege of meeting a woman named Grace…a perfect name for her, by the way.  Grace was someone who not only acknowledged the sunset glow of her life, but who truly basked in it and invited others to join her.  She approached me after church one December Sunday, inviting me to visit her in the assisted living facility where she had recently moved.  She told me that she thought it was important for a future minister to see how an older woman lives.

 

I arrived at her place on a rainy afternoon.  We shared a late lunch in the cafeteria and then visited for the remainder of the day in her tiny but comfortable apartment, a three-room set-up cluttered with furniture and keepsakes of a life well lived.  She told me of the autobiography she was writing and showed me the typewriter where she did most of the work.  She walked me past the mementos of her life, pictures of her husband…dead now for many years, the artwork she had collected and photos of her sisters.  We looked at a few newspaper clippings from her days as an activist and talked about how her life had changed over time.

 

Then our talk turned to the small upright piano that stood against one wall of her living room.  How long had she played, I asked.  Only for a couple of years, she replied.  She accepted my request that she play something.  She pulled out an already worn book of classics and sat down at the keys, poised and at peace.  I knew I was in for something special.

 

She began to play, softly, just tentative enough to convey that she was still a beginner.  As the delicate, well-worn fingers of my new friend gently pushed on the keys and notes trickled out of the wooden box, I was moved to tears.  I could hear in the careful melody filling the room, the tune of a life nearing its end, but not yet complete…a tune both melancholy and joyful…a tune rich with history, still alive to possibility.  That afternoon, if only for a few hours, I could not only hear the sunset, I had become one with it.  I was marveling at its beauty and its grace even as I acknowledged its light would not shine forever.

 

We soon parted company and I began my drive through the streets of Chicago, when I noticed the 4:00 sun was already beginning to make its way into the lower reaches of the city sky.  I knew that Grace had given me a gift by sharing the sunset song of her life with me, a song I guessed she had been playing and sharing long before our paths had crossed.  I also knew that like the sun of that December afternoon, Grace would not shine forever. 

This fall, Grace died.  I regret that I did not hear her play again, but I will always remember the sunset she shared with me.  And I will treasure the colorful streak of memory that her life has added to my own.

 

“The glow of life is always a sunset glow.”

 

Each death we endure, each empty space that appears in our hearts, is another reminder that the time we have together is brief and worthy of our attention and our reverence and our honor. 

Each passing day affords us another precious opportunity not only to bask in the sunset glow of our own lives, but, more importantly, to share our light with others…so that as the shadows lengthen and our time together nears its end, the remaining light may illumine all that this magnificent and wretched life has to offer.

 

“For soon the day is over, night is drawing nigh

Shadows of the evening steal across the sky.

As the twilight gathers, let us pause and hear

All the slowing pulse beats of our waning years.”

 

 

Naming Meditation          Remembering the People Who Have Died This Year

Let us pause in a spirit of meditation and reflection, as I read aloud the names of those we have been asked to remember this day.

 

Esther Amick

Mary Jane Brown

Knox Craig

Charles Crispin

Maxine Dengle

Nettie Zimmerman Ellis

Grace Halperin

Katherine May Hutton

Albert Minnis Rockwell

 

As we pause in quiet reverence and remembrance, I invite you to speak into the silence the names of those who should also be remembered this day.  

 

 

Meditation for 5-26-02

Spirit of Life, that which is greater than all, but present in each,

We set aside this time, this hour together,

Bonded by the losses we share,

to collectively remember what we have lost

To know that we are not alone in our struggles,

To know that we are not alone in our pain.

For none of us have come to this hall

Without our own unique empty spaces…

spaces once filled

with the lives of those we have known and loved—

Partner or parent

Family member or friend—

These empty spaces call out to us

As reminders of the brevity of our time on this earth

As reminders of the brevity of our time together.

We set aside this time, this hour together,

to collectively remember what we have lost

because, in our solitude,

there are days when it might feel better not to remember

To forget those memories of things left unsaid

Of moments left unshared…of life left unlived

But in the presence of those who also know empty spaces,

We are reminded that to forget is to forfeit

Not only our pain but our joy as well.

And to deny what we have lost

Is to disavow what we have received

So this morning, we will remember and we will honor

The memories of those whose lives have touched our own

And we will carry in our hearts

Those inside and outside these walls

who may be grieving the loss of a loved one

Wherever they may be…

Just down the street or an ocean away

Amen.