Expedition or Easy Chair?
Rev. Mark Stringer
First Unitarian Church of Des Moines
2/20/05

“There is something to be said for letting go, for risking the uncertain.” –Richard Gilbert

 

Reading “Life While You Wait” by Polish poet Wislawa Symborska.

 

Life While-You-Wait.

Performance without rehearsal.

Body without alterations.

Head without premeditation.

 

I know nothing of the role I play.

I only know it’s mine, I can’t exchange it.

 

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.

 

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,

I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.

I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.

I trip at every step over my own ignorance.

I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.

My instincts are for hammy histrionics.

Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.

Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

 

Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run—
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

 

If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!

But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.

Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

 

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations.  Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.

The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.

The farthest galaxies have been turned on.

Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.

And whatever I do
will become forever what I’ve done.

 

Sermon

The other day, my wife Susan and I, in the midst of our busy lives of work and caring for our infant daughter, were having one of those rare but important conversations that arise in the all-too-infrequent moments when we actually have time to talk. Parents of young children out there, or those who remember what it was like to be parents of young children, know the kind of conversation I’m talking about.  I’m talking about the conversation in which both you and your partner do your best to calmly articulate why you both feel you may doing more than your fair share.   These conversations are never easy…mostly because you both are right.  You are doing more that your fair share.

 

Fortunately though, just when things can be at their hairiest, the conversation gets interrupted by the real facts of the situation, the facts that transcend your own needs:  the little one requires your attention, or food, or a ride somewhere, or a diaper change.   Soon you are busy tending to the needs of this life before you…this life that demands your attention whether you feel you have any left to give or not.  Yes, even when you most desperately want to press some kind of cosmic pause button so you can plop yourself down and rest a while, life marches on.   There is no easy way to accomplish all that needs to be done; indeed, we might even say it would be impossible to do everything. And yet tending to this innocent life before you can remind you that the very opportunity to try to meet the challenges is a privilege…a privilege greater than perhaps any other. In the end, you just do the best you can and trust that your best will be good enough.

 

Of course, parents are not the only people to feel challenged by this unruly life.  Indeed any of us, no matter how busy or burdened with responsibility we might be, can become too focused on ourselves and our own “hammy histrionics,” as we search for the ever-elusive solutions to our fear or angst.  Meanwhile, we would probably do better to just chill out, feel the privilege it is to be alive, and enjoy ourselves along the way the best we can…maybe even laughing at the absurdity of it all now and then. 

 

In our roles as ministers of this church we share…yes I did refer to all of us as ministers, as I believe we all have a ministry to play in the work of the church even if we don’t yet know or accept what our ministry is…in our roles as ministers, we may be much like parents overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for their little one.  We may get so caught up in all there is to do or in how difficult it is to stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zones that we begin to lose the wonder and magic of the whole enterprise.  In a church like ours, I think this feeling usually comes after we have been around for a while and the luster has worn off the initial excitement that we felt upon finding a religious community that seemed unlike any other we had yet experienced. Perhaps our unrealistic projection of the church gets clouded over by the reality.  For example, maybe we are finding connections within the church harder to come by than we think they should be.  Maybe we are expecting people to reach out to us in ways we ourselves are not reaching out.  Maybe the church leadership doesn’t see things the same way we do.  Maybe the church is growing beyond what it was when we first joined and the change feels scary.  Maybe the choir sings a song with language we don’t like or the minister preaches a sermon we disagree with.  Maybe a fellow church member has finally annoyed us or disappointed us or even insulted us enough that we want to throw our hands in the air in disgust and maybe even walk away. It happens all the time you know…this fracturing of our illusions about what our church is or should be.  And this church is no different in this regard than most others. 

 

In fact, the other day, when I was in the thick of my battle with the nasty cold bug that’s been going around, I was sitting in the doctor’s office with a fever and a big, bad headache.  A woman sitting across from me pulled out her cell phone (as if for my benefit) and began to have a loud and lengthy conversation with the person I assume was her minister.  She was offering to this poor fellow a litany of all the ways the church had let her down…how she wasn’t being honored for her ushering skills, how she was responsible for too much on Sunday mornings, and how disappointed she was with the whole place.  I could hear the tinny voice on the other line gallantly trying to comfort and appease this woman.  I felt for the guy.  I really did.  Especially because this woman seemed too pleased with her own complaints to even hear anything he was trying to say.  From my perspective, she was relishing the opportunity to dump her grievances and she didn’t seem to give a hoot about anything but being heard.  The church had let her down and she was literally glowing as she effectively put it in its place.

 

Now I don’t want to deny that this woman probably was disappointed by her church.  Indeed, eventual disappointment with our religious community is nearly inevitable, if only because our expectations can be so great.   I even try to gently warn newcomers who sit in my office and sing the praises of how special the church seems, how nice everyone is.  “We are nice,” I say, “but we are also human. This is a human community and we humans imperfect, we make mistakes, and we are not always the easiest creatures to get along with.”  Of course, we all know this.  And still, it seems, we may expect a church to be different.  We may try to convince ourselves that within these walls, people should be capable of greater relationship skills than is the case elsewhere in life. 

 

But dare I say that what makes a church special, what makes it such a great place to explore and celebrate this life we share are, in fact, its institutional and interpersonal foibles, its undeniable weaknesses.  In this intergenerational community of various fallible personalities and perspectives, we are welcomed into a grand, challenging, sometimes disappointing, but almost always fascinating adventure that is really just a microcosm of life itself. Where else can we be encouraged to come to terms with our own limitations, even as we are challenged to stretch ourselves further than we might have ever imagined we could or would want to go?

 

You see just when this human project we call a church can seem most futile, and our dreams or expectations most unrealistic, along comes a Sunday like today, when nearly two dozen new members have made the choice to journey with us, to join our ragtag collection of sometimes precious, sometimes prickly, and always imperfect humans for an expedition many years in the making…an expedition that we may not have fully realized awaited us when we first walked through the doors of this place and made this church our home.

 

When I first started attending a UU church, I, like most of you, was not aware of the expedition that awaited me.  I’ve spoken before of how, for weeks, I simply came to the service and, after shaking the minister’s hand, ducked out the door as quickly as I could.  I suppose you could say I came looking for an easy chair.  However, it didn’t take long for me to find that the real gifts of that church became most readily accessible when I stopped isolating myself and started reaching out and getting involved.

 

Of course, each of us will undoubtedly have times in our lives when we will need the church to be an easy chair…a place of rest and relief…a place where we can find some grounding in the midst of life gone awry. This is how it should be.  But ultimately, the church is not here to be just a haven or a shelter from the storms of life.  For most of us, the church should be the place where we are encouraged, if not expected, to reach deep within and far beyond ourselves for experiences, understandings, and possibilities as yet unknown.  The church should be the place where we are nudged and stretched towards whatever adventure may be calling out to us, even when we are not aware that we are being called.  

 

So what adventure may be calling out to you in this church?  Could it be greater involvement in the community through activities with AMOS or DMARC?  Could it be taking the risk to facilitate a small group ministry group or serve on a caring ministry team; to teach a class or sing in the choir; to head up a coffee crew or even preach a sermon?  Could it be the opportunity to delve more deeply into your assumptions and understandings of God or world religions than you ever thought you would want to? Could it be the possibility to get to know people who you otherwise would never have known and maybe finding in the relationships unexpected rewards far outweigh the challenges?

 

For some of you, particularly those of you who are new, the greatest adventure may have been just getting yourself through the doors in the first place.  I know I felt that way when I was new.  I think that’s one of the reasons why I love these new member Sundays so much.  They remind me how I felt when I was new to Unitarian Universalism.  They remind me of the strange mix of fear and excitement that stirred in me as I made the choice to commit myself to an institution of organized religion, something I had spent most of my adult life spurning. And now that I am here and call this place home, these new member Sundays remind me of the responsibility each of us has to keep the church healthy, alive, and welcoming the new life always in our midst. 

 

In my first few months of membership in a UU church, I wrote a song that spoke to how I was feeling and I took the risk to share it in a Sunday morning service.  As I thought about that song this week, I decided to take another risk and to share it with you this morning.  Its words still speak to how I feel, these ten years later.  Maybe they will speak to your experience as well.  The song is called “I Do.”

 

I never thought I’d find myself, here with you today.

I never thought I’d find myself with something good to say.

I never thought I’d find myself seeing life anew

I never thought I’d find myself, but every day…I do.

 

I never have accepted any reason why we’re here,

Based in a disdain for life, filled with hate and fear.

I never could comprehend a God who ruled with scorn

So I never had a need to find myself reborn.

 

So I didn’t come here to find an answer to my prayers

I didn’t enter through these doors to climb up heaven’s stairs

I wasn’t on the lookout for a respite from my sin

I only was in search of a place where I, where my beliefs and I

Could dig in.

 

So take a look around, and see what I’ve found

A place where I can share some hallowed ground.

Now the doors are open wide and I am standing here with pride.

There’s no need to hide, ‘cause either way you’ll still be around.

You’ll still be around.

 

I never thought I’d find myself here with you right now

I never thought I’d find myself, I’d lost myself somehow

I never thought I’d find a place to feel the way I do

I never thought I’d find myself, but every day, every day

Every single day,

I do.