As I look out across this congregation this morning, I see faces of young and old, black and white, gay and straight. Astounding in our diversity, we represent the faces of the world today. There are as many differences between us as similarities, and yet – we all have something in common. All of us, at one time or another, and in some cases many times, have suffered through our share of trials and tribulations. Many of us have been through extreme times in our lives where, from the deepest depths of despair, we couldn’t see our way out, let alone pull ourselves out. The challenges that we have faced, alone or collectively, represent the many different obstacles that pop up in our daily lives, whether they be by our own choice, or by chance. And how we face those challenges – how we draw the strength necessary to overcome those challenges, is just as astounding.
We each have our own ways of dealing with challenges we face in our daily lives. Many of us simply block out, or resist the thoughts that haunt us – we live in denial or choose not to focus on what might be bothering us. In some case, this can be effective, and allow us to focus time on what we can change, what we can accomplish, or how we can move on with our lives. I am guilty of this myself when it comes to dealing with the loss of my father 8 years ago. Easier to not think or talk about it, and just hope that someday the pain will fade enough to be able to deal with it. I know this isn’t the best course to take, but sometimes it’s just easier.
Others see challenges that they face in life as a test of endurance, like running a marathon. One more mile…one more yard…one more step. They think ‘if the person beside me can make it, so can I’. I’ve recently begun learning (again) to play guitar, and I absolutely love the sense of tranquility I get when I play. I had tried when I was a teenager to play – my uncle gave me an old beat up shell of a guiter when I was 16, and I painstakingly built a new body for it, re-wired the electronics, and re-fretted and re-strung the neck. But the anticipation of playing the guitar turned out to be greater than the joy of playing itself, as I quickly grew frustrated that I couldn’t master chords and scales. So that guitar sat in my basement, following me around for 20 years and 5 moves, just waiting. The guitar was persevering, some might say. And every time I looked at it, I would feel twinges of guilt and longing for what I knew I hadn’t let go of completely.
When Emily came home last year and said she wanted to play guitar, we rented an acoustic guitar for her. One night I sat down with it, and the minute it touched my hands I realized two things: first the guitar I had so painstakingly made 20 years ago was really, really bad – no wonder I couldn’t play it! And second, I realized I had to try again. I had reached a place in my life where I don’t get as frustrated with my inabilities, and have more resolve to see things through. I guess that comes with maturity. So I hole myself up late at night in my little basement studio, for hours on end, and even though I’m not a virtuoso – yet – and I get impatient with how slowly I seem to be learning, I tell myself that today, I’m a better guitar player than I was yesterday, and tomorrow, I’ll be better than I am today. If only life had let me realize that 20 years ago.
If we can apply this attitude to everything we do in life, it will work wonders. A favorite line from television’s Homer Simpson, that bumbling, underachieving father that we all love to laugh at, is “Trying is the first step towards failure”. I resolved to not be Homer Simpson, although the physical resemblance is frightening at times. Let’s not worry about failure – let’s worry about the chances we miss when we don’t even try.
In many ways, I think of perseverance as a survival instinct. And not just an instinct that’s present in people, but in animals, plants, even the tiniest one-celled organisms. How much effort does it take for the tiniest seed to work its way up through the cracks in a sidewalk, just to reach that one ray of sunshine that will provide the sustenance it needs? How much effort does it take the salmon to fight its way upstream for miles and miles, just for the chance to mate and create its own little legacy in the world? Is this because life, in any form, has been blessed with the urge to carry on, no matter how tough the fight? And did this dogged determination evolve in all forms of life over the last billion years, so that we all propagate our respective species for eternity?
These are heady questions, and ones that we won’t have the answers to in our lifetime. What we do know is what we see around us – people just like us, doing their best to survive amid a world that can be difficult at best, and cruel at worst. And many times, you never know what the person sitting just to the right or left of you is going through, or how he or she is dealing with it.
Each week, one of our most important aspects of our service takes place, at the end of the service. It’s called Joys and Sorrows. One by one, people approach the pulpit, sometimes eagerly, sometimes with trepidation. We’ve all been there - we silently debate about whether or not we want to go up and share our innermost reflections, milestones and personal events. It’s not easy coming up here to share, and I suspect far too often we have more ‘unspoken’ joys and concerns than spoken. But for those that do come up and share their lives, it’s cathartic – it’s a chance to ‘leave your burdens at the doorstep’, and lighten the load a bit. As Dennis says, this simple ritual is more than a recitation of fact. It’s a weaving together of our theology of relationship: we are each an integral part of the interconnected web and what matters to one is of concern to all of us. I would add that, more than anything else, it’s a way of demonstrating how we each persevere through life.
There are people here in the congregation that have demonstrated incredible displays of perseverance, and that I have long admired in their abilities to rise above the struggles they faced, and who serve as inspiration to us all.
Leni Nazare is one of those people. She was so kind, and at my request, invited me into her home to share her story on a cold winter evening a few months ago. For those of you that don’t know Leni yet, you really are missing out on something special. Three years ago, Leni was diagnosed with breast cancer, during a period of time in which far too many women from this congregation were also stricken with this illness. Somehow she found the courage on a Sunday morning to stand up in front of this congregation and tell us all about her diagnosis, when she had barely had time to deal with it herself. For anyone that was here that morning, it was an astounding display of courage on her part, and the compassion that surrounded her after her announcement was truly heartwarming. They say you can tell the strength of a congregation by its character, and by the strength of the relationships between its congregants, and nowhere else would you see that strength and sense of family more than that morning.
As Leni told me about the events of that morning, and the sense of love that enveloped her, you could see that this was the driving spark in what would become a raging fire of perseverance, as she fought the cancer for the next 9 months. In talking with her, and she opened up about the warmth that she felt from other women who came up to her after her announcement and literally wrapped their arms around her, telling her about their experiences with similar battles, she was simply beautiful. You could just see what a difference that made in her life, knowing what other people had been through, and how they had gotten through it. Over the coming months, these same women from church and from other areas of her life, as well as her incredibly supportive family, continued to provide the inspiration that she needed to get through the dark days. She worked hard to try to maintain a normal life, including tending to all the needs of her family, and that helped her as well. She talked about her acceptance of what had happened to her, about the meditation and massage that she relied on to help her relax. She talked about her Jewish heritage that gave her strength, and her forgiveness of the doctors whose early diagnosis could have avoided what happened, and I could visually imagine the different building blocks that were the foundation of her willpower. It’s an amazing story, and I was incredibly grateful that she shared it with me, so I could share it with you all. I am continually amazed at what we learn from one another here in this sanctuary, and how much we all help one another to get by. How great it is to be a part of such a tight-knit community.
Of course, not all perseverance examples have to do with near-death experiences. The Greek word for perseverance is hupomone, which is defined as steadfastness, constancy, or endurance. To persist in or remain constant to a purpose, idea, or task in the face of obstacles or discouragement. How many stories have we heard throughout history about people who simply refused to give up, who refused to take their eyes off the prize:
R.H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on.
Winston Churchill took three years getting through eighth grade because he had trouble learning English.
Abraham Lincoln was the loser of eight elections for state and national office. And yet today, he is widely regarded as the greatest president in American history.
Perseverance. It transcends culture and religious beliefs. In the Q’uran, Allah reminds us that all people will be tried and tested in life, and calls upon Muslims to bear these trials with "patient perseverance and prayer."
In the Bible, Jesus tells his disciples: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”
A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive. "I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived."
A Buddhist saying is “If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.” No matter what you believe, surely everyone can agree on what a remarkable gift we have all been given.
The other person that inspired me to write this sermon, in the hopes that others would also be inspired to persevere through even the darkest nights, is Joyce Kirk. Joyce is an incredible woman, and someone that I am proud to say is a friend. For those that don't know, Joyce has experienced the tragedy of losing a spouse to cancer. Not once, but twice. She lost her beloved husband Chuck, a pillar of this church in its early years, and the maker of so much music that echoed throughout this sanctuary long before many of us were here. The church bell that we ring every Sunday is a gift from him, and reminds us all of the legacy that we each leave. And then, only recently, she lost her husband Glenn to another form of this deadly disease. When Joyce and I spoke at her home one evening, she absolutely moved me with stories of her life with each of these men, and how she endured both losses with steely resolve. To this day, she lives in the same home that she shared with both husbands, and has memories of each sprinkled throughout. She has looked in the eyes of tragedy, and stared it down.
Joyce truly is perseverance defined. She told me about the one thing that kept her going in the years after her first husband's death - to focus on a goal. The goal for her was to put her children through college. Focusing on that, like a laser, allowed her to live life as best as she could. She also, as many of us do, took solace in music and poetry. She shared with me her favorite books of poetry, and I could tell the pages were well-worn by hands that sought comfort, and yet were strong enough to resist the temptation to give up. She has an optimism that you see in few people - a belief that she was more the recipient of good fortune than fate, because she was able to find two people with whom to share her life. How many people do you know that can see that silver lining in the midst of the darkest storm cloud?
All of us have a great deal to learn from Joyce, and Leni, as we move through the seasons of our lives. Let's do as they did, and treat each day going forward as a new day, something to experience to the fullest, regardless of what stands in our way.
Of course, the perseverance that we have shown goes beyond these four walls. Our social action and social justice committees are just two examples of UUCR groups that are focused on righting social wrongs, and overcoming the frustrating societal resistance to things like labor rights for local Hispanic workers, or civil rights for gays, lesbians and transgenders. Over the winter, many folks from UUCR went down to Richmond recently to try to stem the tide in Virginia related to legally prohibiting marriage, civil union or even domestic partnerships between two members of the same sex. We were defeated – again – but we won’t give up. We will, as Hank implored us to do in his lay ministry call, ‘stand before this wall of ignorance and indifference and bring it down with nothing but our bare hands’. We will persevere in each of these areas, and have no doubt, we will succeed.
I like to think of perseverance as a cloak that we each wear. A cloak that’s made up of patches, of many colors. Our cloaks comes in all shapes and sizes, each as unique as the person who wears it. Each patch that makes up the cloak was woven from a thread of shared experience. We picked up this thread from this person, and that patch from that experience, and each one makes up a different piece of what makes us strong. Our own suits of armor that we all wear to protect ourselves, and - sometimes - that we share with one another. Our cloaks of hope, optimism and strength, that we all wear together. Let us all go forth from here, wearing and sharing our cloaks proudly. Let’s continue to draw strength from one another, learn from one another, and share with one another. Let’s listen a little more closely during the joys and sorrows time, and maybe we will add to our cloaks. Maybe we will find new ways to deal with the pressures that we face outside of these walls. Maybe we’ll find new doors to open, new paths to trod or new friends to make. And maybe we’ll find a new way to persevere.