The world is too much with us... – William Wordsworth

Lighting of the Chalice

For thoughtful, conscious life, we may imagine all creation as being precariously contained in a mended cup of meaning. It is the cup from which we drink our lives -- the cup with which we drink to life. It is a cup which is broken and mended, broken and mended, over and over again. Each time an era passes, a way of life is destroyed, or someone of significance to us dies, we discover that our cup is broken. Yet, somehow -- together -- we must find, we do find the way to mend it all over again.

Our chalice reminds us of that often broken and often mended cup of meaning. The flame we ignite within it helps us remember that even in our times of brokenness, all is not completely dark.

Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Dog, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The dog trots freely in the street
and sees reality
and the things he sees
are bigger than himself
and the things he sees
are his reality
Drunks in doorways
Moons on trees
The dog trots freely thru the street
and the things he sees
are smaller than himself
Fish on newsprint
Ants in holes
Chickens in Chinatown windows
their heads a block away
The dog trots freely in the street
and the things he smells
smell something like himself
The dog trots freely in the street
past puddles and babies
cats and cigars
poolrooms and policemen
He doesn't hate cops
He merely has no use for them
and he goes past them
and past the dead cows hung up whole
in front of the San Francisco Meat Market
He would rather eat a tender cow
than a tough policeman
though either might do
And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory
and past Coit's Tower
and past Congressman Doyle of the Unamerican Committee
He's afraid of Coit's Tower
but he's not afraid of Congressman Doyle
although what he hears is very discouraging
very depressing
very absurd
to a sad young dog like himself
to a serious dog like himself
But he has his own free world to live in
His own fleas to eat
He will not be muzzled
Congressman Doyle is just another
fire hydrant
to him
The dog trots freely in the street
and has his own dog's life to live
and to think about
and to reflect upon
touching and tasting and testing everything
investigating everything
without benefit of perjury
a real realist
with a real tale to tell
and a real tail to tell it with
a real live barking democratic dog
engaged in real free enterprise
with something to say about ontology
something to say about reality
and how to see it and how to hear it
with his head cocked sideways at streetcorners
as if he is just about to have his picture taken
for Victor Records
listening for His Master's Voice
and looking like a living questionmark
into the great gramophone of puzzling existence
with its wondrous hollow horn which always seems
just about to spout forth
some Victorious answer to everything

Guest House, by Rumi

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Homily: “Dover Beach” Reassessed

This is the world we live in:

E. Coli tainting our vegetables

The Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment

The rising death toll in Baghdad

The North Korean bomb

The Abramoff scandal – the White House and the Congress for sale

The Taliban regaining control of eastern Afghanistan

The possibility that we will go to war with Iran

The mistreatment of prisoners of war in Iraq

and of inmates in prisons in the US

The possibility that the November election will be rigged

Congressman Foley’s inappropriate emails to congressional pages

and the attempt to cover them up before the election

Increased restrictions on what we may take aboard an airplane

Murders on the highway in Florida

Murders of school children in Pennsylvania

Murders in Illinois

The loss of habeas corpus protection

Our government’s surveillance of our financial activities

Bird flu

AIDS in Africa

The melting of the ice caps

I stopped at twenty-one, but the list could probably go on for a couple more pages, and each day brings a new concern, and new atrocity. This is the world we live in. It’s mad. It’s certifiable. And we all absorb the disease in one way or another. So my question: How do we stay sane in a mad, mad, mad, mad world? Where do we find the light in all this darkness?

Dover Beach was Matthew Arnold’s response to the breakdown of order he saw in 1869. Even the sea of faith had withdrawn from the shores, and off in the distance one could hear ignorant armies clash by night. Nothing is left that we can be sure of, he says, except our care for those we love. “Let us be true to one another” expresses his last hope.

Today we look out on a similar breaking apart of the old order along several dimensions. We can’t help being aware of many changes and many threats. Fear, hopelessness, anger, and insignificance could easily become our watchwords. Our minds grow numb from the constant bombardment of bad news.

In his poem, Matthew Arnold took refuge in a personal relationship. Love, let us be true to one another. Nothing in the world seems stable except for our love. Does that work for us today? Did it really work in 1869? Dover Beach is certainly a love poem and it is also a comment on the state of the world and the fragility of the human enterprise. I think it’s also a comment on the inadequacy of the old theology or the old faith in the face of so much going wrong.

“Love, let us be true to one another,“ sounds profound at one moment and as shallow as a Hallmark Card the next. Essentially, the poet is telling us that we have no hope of changing the course of events in the world and that our best hope is to turn toward one another with the hope that we can somehow prevent each other’s being drowned. The poem describes an emotional state one rung above despair. I don’t think it offers a useful answer in today’s world, even though what we experience may be many times more threatening than what Arnold looked out on.

For one thing, would not being true to one’s lover mean wanting to protect that person not simply by creating walls and moats to live behind, but also by working to do whatever we can to change things? I think this is especially true if the love we share includes children. We have just vocally committed ourselves to the task of creating a world in which children may grow up strong and free and compassionate. Let us be true to that commitment as a way of being true to one another. On the other hand, the weight of all those stones can keep us from doing anything effective. If we are overwhelmed by the world’s need we are likely to become paralyzed. It is a conundrum.

Where is the light? Actually I want to suggest three lights, three flames, which together may illuminate our lives to show us possibility.

The first flame stands for personal care. Is the world too much with us? Turn off the TV. No TV news for a week at least. Jim Lehrer and Bill Moyers can get along without us watching them, and we can get along without Katie Couric. Take a vacation from Jon Stewart and Bill Maher as well. Let us rest our overstimulated minds. Instead, we might draw sustenance from ancient sources. Psalm 121 offers a different direction to look:

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my strength. My help cometh from the heavens and the earth, from good neighbors and the spirit of the hills and the valleys which I cannot make my own."

My help cometh from outside and from inside. It waits when I am impatient; it goads me when I hesitate from fear. When I am strong with courage and faith, the sun and rain shall not smite me by day, and sorrow will not haunt me by night; goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. They will keep my coming in and my going out. They look from afar like the inscrutable heights of the soul.

Okay, maybe your strength doesn’t come from nature. And escaping into nature can be just as dead a dead end as focusing entirely on another person. Nonetheless, identify that place from which your strength cometh: mountains, the sea, music, running, art, dancing, chanting, therapy. Trot freely through those streets, observing reality. Cock your head at street corners and try to hear what victorious answer the great gramma phone of existence has to share with us. Identify the place from which your strength cometh and give yourself over to it – for a while. When we are overwhelmed to the point of numbness, we need to turn off the offending stimulation and we need to revitalize ourselves, gathering new strength and new vigor. That’s the first flame, breaking the pattern we have been caught in, so that we can rediscover ourselves.

The second flame stands for possibility, as in knowing what is possible and not wasting ourselves on things that are not possible. Sydney and I were so fortunate as to receive an invitation to hear deWitt Jones, the photographer for National Geographic, speak at the NASA Leadership Colloquium on Friday. He used a phrase that I found liberating: we may not be able to make a difference, but we can each make a contribution. We may not be able to make a difference, but we can each make a contribution. I think of a ninety-year old minister we interviewed last week who looks back on his life as a failure because he can’t see that his work made much of a difference in how the world behaves. This is a man who marched in Selma and rescued desperate women from back alley abortionists before abortion was legal. I want to say to him, you made a contribution, and you did it well, conscientiously, and with style. I think of members of my congregation in Maine who worked for Children’s Protective Services and who could become depressed contemplating all the abused and neglected kids they could not stretch themselves far enough to serve, all the abusive, angry families they couldn’t change, all the economic hardships they had no power to ameliorate. I want to say to them, you make a contribution, and you’re good at it and you care deeply, and you give the kids you can reach an alternative reality.

The Jewish sages said, The better world for which we hope may seem distant, but it will not come unless we work to bring it. We may not complete the work, but we are not free to desist. It’s like an American Cancer Society fund raiser – we can each make a contribution, together we can make a sizable contribution, and the work goes on, and someday a cure for the disease may be discovered. We make our contribution. Making a difference is a communal effort of long duration. But remember, the March of Dimes used to be about polio. Polio was licked, so now the March of Dimes is about birth defects. The work goes on.

It took over 60 years to overcome the Jim Crow laws of the South, and it may take another 60 to overcome Jim Crow attitudes. The generation that knew Washington Heights may have to die away before the work is done, and the work goes on.

So, we need to keep ourselves from despairing because we can’t change the world, but we also need to work at what we can do. Having reinvigorated ourselves, we need to spend ourselves wisely, both to prevent our becoming overwhelmed again, and to focus our energies for effectiveness. Let’s put ourselves in what deWitt Jones calls the place of maximum potential. Let’s choose the part of the world’s madness that most bothers us or in which we have the most stake, and let’s make that our cause. Let’s spend ourselves wisely, with the focus and the energy of a laser. Let coherent light be our model.

That’s the second flame, defining our personal vision.

The third flame stands for process. We are perpetually becoming. Each new challenge to our sensibilities, each new affront to peace, each new insult to the social order requires that we learn a new way of walking. Either that or we wall ourselves off and slowly expire. We are never finished, even though we may be bone tired. And the process will never stop. We are about mending the world, and that means that we must mend ourselves as well. It may mean that we must mend ourselves first.

So I offer Rumi’s words, welcome each unexpected visitor, treat each guest honorably. Treat whatever comes into our lives as a fresh opportunity for learning. Even if that guest is named Andrew or Katrina and carries away our entire household, we do best when we are able to ask ourselves, what wants to come into being in this situation? True, the rapidity with which events assail us may momentarily swamp our houses, but survival often depends on tapping inner resources we hadn’t known we possessed. The devastations of World War II led to the rebuilding of Europe and Japan as economic powerhouses. Industries were cleared away, allowing new technologies to take their places. And centuries of warfare and destruction at last led to a commitment never to go to war against each other again.

The same holds true for us. Events may shatter our cup of meaning, but we mend it and mend it again. And each time we learn something about ourselves – our capacity for survival, our creativity, the depth of our ability to love; as well as our anger, our tolerance for frustration, our attachment to things, people, ideas, our process of grieving loss. We learn because of challenges, and when we have dealt with one, another surely comes our way. This is the curriculum of the University of the Universe, where we are working in the Nth degree program. And this is the substance of the third flame: we never stop learning; we never stop mending ourselves; we never stop making our contribution to the world.

Three lights, and a fourth, whose meaning has not yet been discovered.

Stewardship Story (Appealing the Royal Verdict)

Like his son, Alexander the Great, Phillip of Macedon had a reputation for being a heavy drinker. Once when drunk, he gave an unjust verdict in the case of a woman who was being tried before him. “I appeal,” cried the unfortunate litigant. “To whom?,” asked the monarch, who was also the highest tribunal in the land. “From Phillip drunk to Phillip sober,” was the bold reply. The king, somewhat abashed, gave the case further consideration. His final decision is not recorded.

Eventually the king would become sober, so the woman could appeal to the king’s better nature. The madness of our world today not so quickly overcome. We may have to endure generations of craziness before something like peace is born. We hope that this church is an island of sanity amidst all the chaos. Within these walls we try to create a rational, reflective, cooperative, and respectful way of being. To the extent that we succeed, we become a laboratory for social change, learning how to live at peace so that we can carry that learning into the larger community. This is just one of the reasons that we must continue to give the church our financial support. The work must go on.

Spoken Benediction: The Prayer of Saint Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O, Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.