Sermon “How it is that we live forever”
Worship Service, October 27, 2013
Foothills Unitarian Church
For most of my childhood, I went to mass at my little Catholic Church twice a week. Which means that, twice a week, for somewhere in the range of 13 years, I heard and repeated in word or song a few key refrains, again, and again. There is no doubt that I am deeply formed by those many many hours spent with my religious community, and that back-and-forth we had with our priests, and the regular experience that I was a part of a a story with a script written long before me, and that would be lived out long after I was gone.
But what's really funny now, is that sometimes as I am doing other things, these liturgical phrases come to me. Out of the blue. Sometimes gifts, sometimes annoyances. The one that has been on my mind while considering this service and the question of what happens after we die, is the one that goes: We believe in everlasting life.
This is the idea that life doesn't end. We don't end. We live forever. In my catholic context, only a select group got to live forever, of course; while our Universalist forebears would've said we're all in. We're all saved. Today, I wonder, what would it mean for us to imagine we could live forever? To make a claim for everlasting life?
Though the idea sounds lofty and fantastical, in reality I think that it's one that all of us, at one time or another, have tried very hard to make. Especially when we have lost someone, someone who mattered, who helped us understand how we mattered....in those early moments, when their absence seems to be everywhere - we cling to their graveside awaiting some sign that it was all a dream. They can't be gone. They can't leave. They need to stay, forever. They'll live forever!
Maybe for some of you this was how it felt when Marc and Vicki made their retirement announcement. It's not true! They aren't leaving. They'll be here forever!
Neuroscientists say it takes three years for the brain to adjust to a new reality after a big loss or ending. After you lose a spouse, or a longtime friend, three years for the brain to make new connections, literally create new nodes. This is an important thing to remember as we all move through the next few years together. The brain takes its own time.
A few summers ago, when I worked as a hospital Chaplain, I’d sit with families after they’d learned their loved one was dying. They’d look right at me, and tell me the whole story, the way their whole world had been remade in a flash – and even as they told me, I could tell it wasn’t really real. My mom is dying, their words would say. She’ll live forever, their bodies would say. Your brain takes three years, I’d say.
Meanwhile, while the brain is catching up - what is there to do, but to practice that supreme spiritual wisdom that goes: fake it til you make it.
Kidding aside, one definition of faith is the act of living "as if" something is true as a way of making it so. We live "as if" we understand, "as if" we can go on, "as if" life isn't totally upside down.
And in our practice, we can't help but conclude: life is risky, dangerous, and unfair.
It dares us to love, to attach, calls this it's true purpose, says you aren't really living if you don't - only to later reveal that life is about both taking in
and letting go.
As with our breath: in, and then out.
A few years back, my mom called me to tell me the news about her buddy – that’s her best friend since kindergarten. Going on sixty years later, they still lived within blocks of each other. My mom’s news – well, her buddy had cancer. Bad cancer, fast cancer. She maybe had 3, or 6 months. One minute, she was living a kind of ideal life – friends, children, grandchildren, a beautiful home, world travel. And then the next minute, she was dying.
Our reason fails us in moments like this. We learn quickly just how ridiculous the brain can be, how slow to understand that the world has been suddenly remade. 3 years? That’s probably optimistic.
And sometimes our faith fails us, too. My parents are committed, life-long Catholics, but a promise of seeing her buddy in some other life wasn’t much help to my mom on that day, or any of the days that followed. In the depths of aggressive chemo, hair loss, with her body just disappearing as if by the second, all she could say was: no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Over those months, my mom would call me, angry, and heartbroken. And little by little, we began to talk about forgiveness. I know, usually when we say forgiveness, we mean, people. But in this case, we meant, forgiveness of time. Forgiveness of the moment. And forgiveness of the universe for being so cruel.
Because I could see, the other option, if not a life of forgiveness, well it wasn’t life. The few moments she had left with her buddy, they wouldn’t be lived. They’d be avoided, and lost, and over, and there would be no getting them back.
The path to living forever starts by living now. In this real moment.
Letting go of what you wanted today to be and bring, and instead, just being here, as it is, already.
I forgive you, time, universe, life.
We usually talk acceptance. But acceptance relies upon your brain to simply incorporate the new reality, and I already told you what a long slow and unreliable process that can be. But forgiveness is a practice of the heart, an practice that pairs well with living "as if," and it is this practice that can make space for acceptance to come in the brain, later, eventually.
And in this space, new possibilities awaken.
In just a few months, we will watch those daffodils coming up yet again- planted years ago, and though they go away, they return with even greater force each year, often in new places - and we will remember, with astonishment: renewal, transformation, and rebirth.
Our universe is filled with both limits and possibilities. What we think of as the end is filled with so much mystery, and we do not yet know what new thing is being born, in the midst of all this rubble. The caterpillar is pretty sure it will always be a caterpillar, until one day, it’s not.
One afternoon in the hospital, I was sitting with a family after a sudden, difficult death. Out of the silence one of the nurses pronounced, I guess God needed an angel.
As she said it, I got this lump in my throat and I tried to breathe my way through her really terrible theology, and instead back to the loving presence I hoped to embody for those now intimate strangers.
I didn’t know their religious beliefs. I had just met them. Maybe they were all about God needing an angel. But the son. He looked at me right then. Lost, and scared. And not at all consoled by the nurse and the idea that his father might now be an angel. And I took him by the hand, and I said: I don’t know what happens, when we die. But I guess I imagine that somehow, he’s less contained now, he’s everywhere. He can be with you, everywhere. All the time.
Oh I know, it’s not enough to overcome the body – the loss of that body, and the ways words form from their lips, and their unique breath, and the dawning reality that all that is over. But it is something to imagine – that rather than ending, we transform.
A few days before she died, I wrote to my mom’s buddy, to say thank you for being the friend she was to my parents, especially to my mom.
I’m not sure about heaven, I said. I am not sure it’s even an appealing idea.
But I do know, my mom was a better person because of the way you loved her. And I know I am a better person because my mom was so loved, for so long, and so well. And so I know your life will go on, and on. And this is the best kind of immortality that I know.
The love we give the world. The hope we embody. What we teach. What we grow. What we plant, and what we sow.
Or what we don’t.
This is how it is that we live forever.
Our lives are a promise, a promise we fulfill and break and renew every day, with every new beginning, and each new ending. And a promise that reaches its fullest potential at our end. Our faithfulness to this promise and how its legacy continues on is our everlasting life.
What promise is your life making? How is it that you will live forever?
Within this community, we hold both life's limits and possibilities, the ways life comes to an end, and the ways that it never does. Forgiving, and forgiven, we accept it all, the terrifying and beautiful mystery of it all.
Knowing only that we cannot know what new life and new truth will emerge out of this day. Knowing we are only invited to trust.
To receive it as a gift. And to be grateful.
May we be together a promising people. May our shared journey allow us to bring more love to more of the world. Let us create together a vision, a bold bright vision of life, abundant, and everlasting.
May it be so, and amen.
Worship Service, October 27, 2013
Foothills Unitarian Church
For most of my childhood, I went to mass at my little Catholic Church twice a week. Which means that, twice a week, for somewhere in the range of 13 years, I heard and repeated in word or song a few key refrains, again, and again. There is no doubt that I am deeply formed by those many many hours spent with my religious community, and that back-and-forth we had with our priests, and the regular experience that I was a part of a a story with a script written long before me, and that would be lived out long after I was gone.
But what's really funny now, is that sometimes as I am doing other things, these liturgical phrases come to me. Out of the blue. Sometimes gifts, sometimes annoyances. The one that has been on my mind while considering this service and the question of what happens after we die, is the one that goes: We believe in everlasting life.
This is the idea that life doesn't end. We don't end. We live forever. In my catholic context, only a select group got to live forever, of course; while our Universalist forebears would've said we're all in. We're all saved. Today, I wonder, what would it mean for us to imagine we could live forever? To make a claim for everlasting life?
Though the idea sounds lofty and fantastical, in reality I think that it's one that all of us, at one time or another, have tried very hard to make. Especially when we have lost someone, someone who mattered, who helped us understand how we mattered....in those early moments, when their absence seems to be everywhere - we cling to their graveside awaiting some sign that it was all a dream. They can't be gone. They can't leave. They need to stay, forever. They'll live forever!
Maybe for some of you this was how it felt when Marc and Vicki made their retirement announcement. It's not true! They aren't leaving. They'll be here forever!
Neuroscientists say it takes three years for the brain to adjust to a new reality after a big loss or ending. After you lose a spouse, or a longtime friend, three years for the brain to make new connections, literally create new nodes. This is an important thing to remember as we all move through the next few years together. The brain takes its own time.
A few summers ago, when I worked as a hospital Chaplain, I’d sit with families after they’d learned their loved one was dying. They’d look right at me, and tell me the whole story, the way their whole world had been remade in a flash – and even as they told me, I could tell it wasn’t really real. My mom is dying, their words would say. She’ll live forever, their bodies would say. Your brain takes three years, I’d say.
Meanwhile, while the brain is catching up - what is there to do, but to practice that supreme spiritual wisdom that goes: fake it til you make it.
Kidding aside, one definition of faith is the act of living "as if" something is true as a way of making it so. We live "as if" we understand, "as if" we can go on, "as if" life isn't totally upside down.
And in our practice, we can't help but conclude: life is risky, dangerous, and unfair.
It dares us to love, to attach, calls this it's true purpose, says you aren't really living if you don't - only to later reveal that life is about both taking in
and letting go.
As with our breath: in, and then out.
A few years back, my mom called me to tell me the news about her buddy – that’s her best friend since kindergarten. Going on sixty years later, they still lived within blocks of each other. My mom’s news – well, her buddy had cancer. Bad cancer, fast cancer. She maybe had 3, or 6 months. One minute, she was living a kind of ideal life – friends, children, grandchildren, a beautiful home, world travel. And then the next minute, she was dying.
Our reason fails us in moments like this. We learn quickly just how ridiculous the brain can be, how slow to understand that the world has been suddenly remade. 3 years? That’s probably optimistic.
And sometimes our faith fails us, too. My parents are committed, life-long Catholics, but a promise of seeing her buddy in some other life wasn’t much help to my mom on that day, or any of the days that followed. In the depths of aggressive chemo, hair loss, with her body just disappearing as if by the second, all she could say was: no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Over those months, my mom would call me, angry, and heartbroken. And little by little, we began to talk about forgiveness. I know, usually when we say forgiveness, we mean, people. But in this case, we meant, forgiveness of time. Forgiveness of the moment. And forgiveness of the universe for being so cruel.
Because I could see, the other option, if not a life of forgiveness, well it wasn’t life. The few moments she had left with her buddy, they wouldn’t be lived. They’d be avoided, and lost, and over, and there would be no getting them back.
The path to living forever starts by living now. In this real moment.
Letting go of what you wanted today to be and bring, and instead, just being here, as it is, already.
I forgive you, time, universe, life.
We usually talk acceptance. But acceptance relies upon your brain to simply incorporate the new reality, and I already told you what a long slow and unreliable process that can be. But forgiveness is a practice of the heart, an practice that pairs well with living "as if," and it is this practice that can make space for acceptance to come in the brain, later, eventually.
And in this space, new possibilities awaken.
In just a few months, we will watch those daffodils coming up yet again- planted years ago, and though they go away, they return with even greater force each year, often in new places - and we will remember, with astonishment: renewal, transformation, and rebirth.
Our universe is filled with both limits and possibilities. What we think of as the end is filled with so much mystery, and we do not yet know what new thing is being born, in the midst of all this rubble. The caterpillar is pretty sure it will always be a caterpillar, until one day, it’s not.
One afternoon in the hospital, I was sitting with a family after a sudden, difficult death. Out of the silence one of the nurses pronounced, I guess God needed an angel.
As she said it, I got this lump in my throat and I tried to breathe my way through her really terrible theology, and instead back to the loving presence I hoped to embody for those now intimate strangers.
I didn’t know their religious beliefs. I had just met them. Maybe they were all about God needing an angel. But the son. He looked at me right then. Lost, and scared. And not at all consoled by the nurse and the idea that his father might now be an angel. And I took him by the hand, and I said: I don’t know what happens, when we die. But I guess I imagine that somehow, he’s less contained now, he’s everywhere. He can be with you, everywhere. All the time.
Oh I know, it’s not enough to overcome the body – the loss of that body, and the ways words form from their lips, and their unique breath, and the dawning reality that all that is over. But it is something to imagine – that rather than ending, we transform.
A few days before she died, I wrote to my mom’s buddy, to say thank you for being the friend she was to my parents, especially to my mom.
I’m not sure about heaven, I said. I am not sure it’s even an appealing idea.
But I do know, my mom was a better person because of the way you loved her. And I know I am a better person because my mom was so loved, for so long, and so well. And so I know your life will go on, and on. And this is the best kind of immortality that I know.
The love we give the world. The hope we embody. What we teach. What we grow. What we plant, and what we sow.
Or what we don’t.
This is how it is that we live forever.
Our lives are a promise, a promise we fulfill and break and renew every day, with every new beginning, and each new ending. And a promise that reaches its fullest potential at our end. Our faithfulness to this promise and how its legacy continues on is our everlasting life.
What promise is your life making? How is it that you will live forever?
Within this community, we hold both life's limits and possibilities, the ways life comes to an end, and the ways that it never does. Forgiving, and forgiven, we accept it all, the terrifying and beautiful mystery of it all.
Knowing only that we cannot know what new life and new truth will emerge out of this day. Knowing we are only invited to trust.
To receive it as a gift. And to be grateful.
May we be together a promising people. May our shared journey allow us to bring more love to more of the world. Let us create together a vision, a bold bright vision of life, abundant, and everlasting.
May it be so, and amen.