DWELL IN POSSIBILITY: WINDS OF CHANGE
by Pam Rumancik

A cool wind is blowing around the edges of the church today and
you can feel a new season waiting to take hold. We have enjoyed the
deep warmth of summer – along with its rich growth and fragrant
offerings -- but now we move into a time of rest.

The colors of the trees are beginning to burst forth and I am led
to ponder on this marvel. The colors which now appear are not
new. They have existed all along in the brilliant green leaves
waving overhead. They were merely overwhelmed by the
action of photosynthesis. Green dominated all the other
pigments and made them invisible.

But now, the enchanted work of creating food from sunlight has
gone into remission and the deep red, oranges, and yellows are
finally becoming apparent.

How many ways does this happen in our own lives? How many times
are the deepest longings of our hearts buried under too much
business and hurry? How often do we forget to live, distracted
by the process of making a living?

Children instinctually love to visit with their grandparents because
the business of life has passed. Grandparents often have time to
pay attention to the lazy pace of an ant or the patience to help
young hands do a task for the first time. The hectic pace has
slowed – and there is time to actually look around and notice
the amazing gifts of this blessed existence.

We each have brilliant hues hiding within our souls. We
have dreams and visions, insights and passions gently
waiting for a ripe moment to emerge. For just a bit, let us
allow the green of doing to fall away; let us rest for a
brief moment in our autumnal souls. What soul colors
may be revealed in this season of turning?

We Only Have to Love  by Pam Rumancik

In Japan they collect ancient bowls and pottery in which their cracks have been filled with gold. When a tea pot or bowl has broken they patch it with resin and then coat the resin with gold powder. Not only are the cracks visible – they highlight the durability of the piece and give the pottery enhanced beauty and resilience.

There's a Japanese story of a man who had bought a beautiful new vase, immaculate, created by a master. He wanted to show this piece to his friend after their tea ceremony. But since the vase was so new, he was ashamed of presenting it to his friend. So he took a brush and dipped it into gold varnish which is used to cover the glue in cracks and fissures in ceramics. He drew a line that looked like a crack in the new vase. Now it looked old and mended, not perfect any more.

This is how he presented the vase to his friend, who immediately understood the matter. He admired this aged vase and regarded his friend with the highest esteem.

In the Japanese culture they understand that new and pristine has not yet stood the test of time. It’s untried – and much less interesting than a cracked and aged pot streaked with gold.

A pot's value does not come from being undamaged…

Which brings us to Mary Oliver’s poem – Wild Geese.

"You do not have to be good…" our cracks may well be our most valuable assets if we just look at life a little differently…

Karen and I began reflecting on our lives for today’s sermon. It’s been a roller coaster ride – chaplain, ordination, coming down to serve a church in the south when the only thing I’d said about where I wanted to go was ‘not below the Mason-Dixon line.’  And that was all about not liking heat.  It just goes to prove – want to make God laugh? Start making plans…

But this is the end of the year – and a time where many people look back over the past 12 months and take stock.  What went well? What tanked?  Where did I live up to my expectations? Where did I miss the mark?

This church has had a pretty wild year as well.

Only last January it was celebrating your 60^th anniversary and looking at a newly invigorated church community with a certain set of expectations about what would happen next.

And now – here you are with an interim minister getting ready to begin the search process for a new settled one.

What happened?  Were mistakes made? Did everyone act from their very best place?

Maybe yes, maybe no. Probably we will never exactly know but part of the work we are doing during this interim period is figuring out where the cracks are – and how we can fill them in with gold.

Life is complicated. Everyone can be acting from the very best place possible and still things go awry…  how do we respond and continue to get stronger and more resilient in that process?

Karen talked about the impossibility of being perfect – there is no such thing as a perfect human being. No such thing as a perfect life – there’s no such thing as a perfect church. So what do we aim for?

We know we screw up. We fall off diets, we “forget” to exercise, we hurt people’s feelings, we make mistakes.  Each of us messes up from time to time, no matter how hard we try. The story of David shows that even our heroes mess up – and sometimes in a really big way.  And yet, still they are beloved of God.

So it’s not that we mess up so much as how we respond to missing the mark – to being human.  We can bluff our way through and hope that we put it behind us – and that it can be forgotten about – forgive and forget! But that doesn’t help us move forward.  In thinking about the Japanese bowls that would be the equivalent of just buying a new one.

The other response is stopping and really looking at what happened and finding a way to learn, to grow, to become stronger from our missteps.  This would be looking with our heart and responding with love so that we might be stronger and wiser for the next year.

Painting our cracks with gold not only owns our mistakes – but claims the hard won wisdom they represent. Our response to life determines who we become – who we are.

Because in life it is our cracks, our broken places, our places where we have failed and learned and tried again that make us beautiful and filled with life.

Our cracks, our weakness, our woundedness, these are the stuff that makes lives of rich meaning and deep understanding. If I have never broken a promise or missed a deadline, or broken something valuable, I will not be able to have compassion when someone else does one of those things. 

But if I am aware of my own shortfalls, it is much easier to have empathy and compassion for another’s problems.

It is my brokenness which makes me whole, my shortcomings which deepen my ability to love.

As Unitarian Universalists we come with a deep tradition of Universalism – which believes that all are beloved by a God who accepts us exactly as we are – flaws and shortcomings. It is from this place that we are called to love the world.  Not despite our failings, but in the midst of them.

Mary Oliver wrote – "you do not have to be good… you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

Can we love as we are called to love? Love without conditions? Love without limitations? Love without earning or denying our humanity? 

How do we love the cracked and flawed humans who share this planet with us?

These are big questions as we close in upon a new year but the answer is the same as every other year. We love from our brokenness and from our pain – we love from the mistakes we make and the triumphs we share. We love imperfectly but still –

We only have to love…

All of us everyone beloved of Gd

From the stem of Jesse came a baby known as Jesus. Halleluiah. Christmas has come and gone new years is just around the corner  - we are in between.

A time of reflection, a time when new promises are made, new dreams given review.

We are looking at where we have come from. We stand in this day on top of a mountain and can look back over the route that we have taken to arrive here and wonder.
I am not sure about you but if anyone had asked me at this moment last year if this is where I would be today.  If someone had handed me a list of 3 cities to guess and Chattanooga had been on it I may have even wondered - is that city real or is that just a made up name from a song I once sang in the car with my parents as we traveled on long vacation trips.


From the stem of Jesse came a baby known as Jesus. Today I find myself thinking of the stem of Jesse - a man named David.

Perhaps because of the choir’s offering, but also because David is an enigma. Handsome king David in biblical tales from Chronicles and Kings is an amazing and complex person.

The youngest of Jesse's sons he was chosen by Samuel to be part of Kind Saul's entourage.
He was everything we seem to like and hate in a leader. He was charismatic,he was brave (fighting the behemoth Goliath with only a sling shot), he was creative being the author of the book of psalms, he was a thoughtful and even doting father.

But David was complicated as well. He was passionate and he took what he wanted - even if that was the wife of one of his generals. He was clever (when he knew that Bathsheba was pregnant from their joining he demanded that Uriah come back and sleep with his wife - when he refused clever and diabolical David ordered his soldiers to leave him alone in battle ensuring his death.

David is complicated. 

I wonder if he started that year thinking about where he might end up. I wonder if he would have imagined the betrayal that he would experience - the deepest betrayal we can experience - knowing that we have fallen short of our own expectations of ourselves.
But David is complicated and an amazing leader - partly because in the face of this betrayal - he does something amazing. He does not cry out that he had every right to do what he did - as beloved of Gd - as passionate charismatic - as king. Instead he accepts his fate (which is harsh) and he goes out to comfort his new wife.

David is complicated. and David is living into one of the most beautiful of Jewish principles. The person (man) who is sinless can never be as righteous as the person who has sinned and turned back from sin.

In this case let us take the ancient understanding of sin as meaning "to miss the mark" it is originally derived from an archery term. David missed the mark - his prophet, Nathan, has confirmed what he already suspected.

Perhaps intoxicated by power, he reached beyond what he should to forbidden fruit.  He then tried to correct it - and then again and then. Finally he stopped and stood and simply accepted his fault.

Halleluiah. David stopped - instead of pointing fingers or making excuses or changing his laws to meet his own whims - he accepted that he was wrong and began the long trek toward a different kind of wholeness.

Wholeness  - once we realize that we are not perfect - that we will never be perfect - that we are far from being able to expect perfection. The world we live within is complicated. 

Many world religions take our human imperfectibility on in different ways. Some say it is out of our woundedness - out of our lack - out of our perfect imperfections that some of our most beautiful and profound realizations, insights and evolutions can be born.

For the Buddhist we see this depicted in the symbol of the lotus flower. It is beautiful, pure white and fragrant, and only grows out of the richest of soil - some might call it s**t at the bottom of the pond. Its growth only comes from a letting go of what was, what is decaying on the bottom, to create what will be next.

For the Taoists it is the depiction of Yin and Yang. Not as dualistic as it first appears but instead a reminder that yang outward energy always has a piece coming back yin that movement inward to a more passive state always has within it a way back out to balance.

For the Hindu this understanding might be held in the image of the goddess Kali - nothing is created without first the destruction - nothing is destroyed without the presence of possibilities within creation.

For some Christians - the further stem of Jesse - sin or missing the mark can be complicated further by the concept of an external incomplete grace. This grace is only granted to those who accept an image of a God who bargains and grants pardons.

But grace that comes as a result of our woundedness is the one that we learn from our universalist heritage. Universalism means that all are beloved of God and will return to that from which we came – and it demands that I participate in creating a community and society where we are all beloved of Gd.

ALL of us. 

All of us beloved does not mean that I can act any way I want. It means that if I love myself I will create a world for myself – and others - that is safe and probably even generous. Being loved without reservation allows me to live into that love and not act from fear or power over others.

If we wish to live into this love we recognize that we are all responsible for this world and all who live within it. If gd loves everyone who should I not love?

Now back to David for a moment – pure love does not equal approval. Indeed the UU peacemaking groups would have us recognize that love must be strong enough to stand up to tyrannical or abysmal behavior. Our universalist heritage teaches that it is our responsibility to foster a community and society that promotes goodness and mercy for  everyone.  Love is complicated - just like life. 

We are bound by our nature to "sin” - to fall short.  It is not those actions alone that form us however.

Ultimately when I take responsibility for my actions I am formed by those results as well. When David stood with Nathan and wondered at what he brought upon his house, his response was to be contrite and to begin the long arduous process of providing comfort to those he had hurt most deeply. His life was still complicated but out of this moment of reflection and evolution came the next great leader – his son, Solomon, who would lead his people with such an even hand that I can still remember hearing the stories of his great wisdom as child. Halleluiah

Today as I stand looking back over this year. I can see places where I was less than I wished to be. I can see places where I brought more love than I got back and I can see places where mercy followed me relentlessly.

Today I look back and find those things that I might do differently. And I turn to this next year knowing that I may be made better by my reflection. It is not grace that I seek - I believe grace in love is here for all of us - instead what I seek is redemption. The redemption that comes from knowing I can be imperfect today just as I have been and still be called to be in this world with a fierce and mighty love. Love that says no .. and yes. Love that works for justice and is self reflective. Love that is deeply imbued in all of us and love demands that we live within it now.