(1) Well, Dennis!

Since we celebrated our Anniversary last week, it is time to ask my annual question. Are you Happy?

(2) That’s one of those questions like, “Does this dress make me look fat?” or “Would I look younger if I dyed my hair?” that experienced husbands learn not to respond to directly. I suppose I could throw it back at you and ask, “Why do you ask, aren’t you happy?” but I won’t do that.

I have to confess that I don’t quite know what happy means any more. We now have Happy Meals, and Happy Faces, Happy Tree Friends, and Happy Days. If we were to believe Redbook’s “Nineteen Secrets to a Happy Marriage,” happiness is a continual state of low-level titillation. “Flirt, flirt, flirt,” is their advice. (Secret number eleven.)

So I have to come up with my own words. I am content. I am comfortable, perhaps to the point of complacency. I can’t imagine living with anyone else, nor being able to have the same kind of working relationship with anyone else. I can’t imagine having such a close match in tastes with anyone else (except when it comes to movies). I can’t imaging being more in sync with another person. So, if all that adds up to being happy, yes, I am. You?

(3) You do have a way with words. Yes, I’m happy. I have many of the same feelings as you about our relationship, I can’t imagine being with anyone else and I am constantly amazed at how well matched we are. But, content and complacent, is that enough?

I think of happiness as a bit more exciting than that. Happiness has moments of exhilaration, and a few thrills thrown in. When I’m happy I want to sing or maybe dance! I guess I think of happiness as existing on the peaks, and contentment more of a plateau. I suppose we can’t live on the peaks all the time, but then there are also times when I would say I am happy and don’t even know it. Happy just is, and in fact if I thought about it or tried to weigh it, it might come to an end.

Don’t you ever have peaks and valleys, do you always live on the plateau?

(4) Yeah, I suppose I do have peaks and valleys, but I don’t think they’re relevant to happiness. Didn’t we vow to love and cherish one another in sickness as well as in health, in the times when we are strapped as well as the flush times, in sorrow as well as in joy? I even remember a comment from someone attending our wedding to the effect that I really did vows well. My contentment includes all those states. In fact, the trying times can be the happiest times, because that’s when we discover new strength in ourselves and in our relationship.

Let me bring in a little scholarship here – Yesterday I was reading an article in The Christian Century about how to live as a disciple, which is an important concept in Christianity and one deserving of emulation among our fold as well. The author was somewhat critical of spiritual discipline training, especially of the weekend retreat variety, because it focuses on technique rather than on truly living in this world. He reminds us of the new teaching that Jesus brought to Israel when he combined the phrase from Deuteronomy about loving our God with all our heart and mind and soul, with the phrase from Leviticus about loving our neighbor as ourselves. This, he says, is the very foundation of a meaningful life, holding onto both these commandments and living by them.

As UUs we have espoused the idea of loving our neighbor as ourselves, but we have given short shrift to the idea of loving our God. The closest we come, I think, is when we repeat the seventh principle, about the interdependent web of all existing things of which we are a part. But we tend to interpret that expression to mean the pretty parts of nature, the warmth of our community, and the closeness of our relationships. Truly affirming the interdependent web requires that we also affirm those times when the balances of the universe seem to take away from our well-being rather than enhancing it, the times of sorrow, poverty, and sickness.

This morning’s Opus comic strip shows an encounter between a Latin American immigrant and a disabled veteran in a motorized wheelchair. The vet sees himself as a victim. He’s quick to criticize and disparage the man before him who is unable to speak English. The immigrant explains in his own language that he had hoped to learn English on the trip from his homeland, but there were too many obstacles to overcome and he never had the time. Now, he’s proud to say, he’s here, and he works three jobs. The vet is looking for a handout. The immigrant misunderstands and thinks the man was offering him money, which he refuses. “No thanks,” he says, “I have money.” As they part, the veteran is muttering, “God save America,” under his breath. The immigrant is saying, “God bless America.” The one man thinks things have to go his way for him to be happy. The other has learned that happiness is a by-product of surviving against the odds. He is a warrior – a happy warrior. We don’t hear much about happy victims.

(5) You know, Dennis, in the Judith Viorst poem, which I read earlier, “Happiness Revisited,” I left out a line. The second stanza reads: “Happiness Is falling asleep without Valium, And having two breasts to put in my brassiere, And not (yet) needing to get my blood pressure lowered, my eyelids raised or a second opinion.”

I left out the breast part. I left it out because I know that there are women in this room who cannot say the same, and yet have found a way to revisit happiness. For me it is not the spectre of cancer, it is chronic pain, the knowledge that tripping on a crack and falling on my face could cause me to bleed to death and the knowledge that several of the medicines I have taken for decades are toxic to the liver and kidneys. It is a trade off. We all have them and yet most of us do not carry-on our lives shrouded in doom and gloom.

This summer I attended the memorial service for a beloved member of a church I had served 14 years ago. One of the women approached me with a doleful look me and said in the saddest tone. “It has been five years since breast cancer.” My heart went out to her. Two days later another women approached me wearing a brilliant smile and triumphantly announced, “It has been five years since breast cancer!” She brought cheer to my heart, reason to celebrate! I don’t want to dis the first person, her fears are real, and I doubt that anyone who lives with the knowledge of a life threatening disease ever forgets the fragility of their own mortality, but I do want to make the point that happiness is a state of mind. As Judith Viorst points out, with time and experience we lower our expectations of happiness and take pleasure in the more modest triumphs.

This month, one of my covenant groups will be discussing the cliche, “There is no key to happiness, the door is always open.” Like most cliches, the statement has the ring of truth, but it is simplified. Happiness is a state of mind, but I don’t think it is a state that can be forced, nor do I think that happiness consists of just being content with what has been handed to us. There are times I would declare myself happy when I am not content, when I am striving for something more. Happiness can be the challenge. Happiness can be the pathway to the door as well as crossing the threshold. What I think is counter productive is the search for the key.

I have never found happiness when I looked for it. There is something in the looking that blinds the eye to what is there.

(6) You remind me of that old story about Mullah Nasrudin searching for his key under the street light because the light was good there, even though he’d lost the key where it was dark. It’s not clear what the key is meant to open, although it could certainly be the key to happiness.. Nonetheless, the story implies that in order to find the key, we must go back into the dark places, the scary places, the painful places, where we can learn who we really are, what our strengths are, and how we contribute to the things we fear.

Let me tell you a true story. Young Brett was doing very well in the year-end karate competition, defeating one after another of his opponents and rising to the semifinal round. He began to dream of being a champion. However, his opponent for that semifinal match was a Samoan boy who outweighed him be forty pounds and whose arms were several inches longer. He was big, and he was strong, and he was fast, and he was incredibly solid. Brett couldn’t move him, couldn’t trick him, certainly couldn’t throw him, couldn’t catch him off balance, and the more he tried, the easier it was for the Samoan boy to throw him. He lost the match.

On the way home, poor Brett was feeling sorry for himself. He has been doing so well, his hopes had been so high. His loss was devastating. “If only it hadn’t been for that darned Samoan,” he sputtered. At which both his parents, simultaneously, responded, “Brett, there will always be a Samoan.”

Sometimes we finish second. Sometimes we don’t even win the bronze. Brett had missed part of the training he was supposed to be getting from his karate lessons, and I fault his sensei for this. Karate is the way of the empty hand, the way of humility. It isn’t about sparring or chopping or throwing, but about learning the truth that one’s greatest opponent is oneself – all the competitions were held to reinforce this one truth, that there will always be a Samoan, and when we come up against that Samoan, our greatest opponent will be ourselves.

Happiness doesn’t have to do with winning, you see, and it certainly doesn’t have to do with avoiding the rough places in life. Happiness has to do with being able to bring our best to the hard encounters and experiencing defeats and setbacks with our spirits intact.

May our knowledge of sorrow be tempered with joy. May our fear be well-balanced by courage and strength. May the sight of injustice spur us to just actions. May our failures be teachers, that our spirits may grow. May we be gentle and joyful and kind -- then our lives will be magic, and life will be good.