“Facing Death”

Sunday, 5 November 2006

Rev. Robert M. Hardies

Our reading this morning is from Victoria Safford, an excerpt from her book, Walking Toward Morning.  It’s called “In Between.”

One afternoon, some time ago, I brought my little baby out to visit a very, very old

                neighbor who was dying that year, quietly and gracefully.  We were having a little

                birthday party for her with sherry and cake and a few old friends gathered ‘round her

                bed.  To free a hand to cut the cake, I put my baby down, right on the bed, right up on

                the pillow, and there was a sudden hush in the room, for we were caught off guard,

                beholding.  It was a startling sight:  There in the late afternoon light were two human

                beings, side by side.  Neither one could talk, not in language we could understand,

                both utterly dependent on the rest of us, bustling around, masquerading as immortals.

                There they were, a plump one, apple-cheeked, a cherry tomato of a babe, smiling.

                And a silver thin one, hollow-eyed, translucent, smiling.  We revelers were hushed

                because we clearly saw that these were dancers on the very edge of things.  These two

                were closer to the threshold, the edge of the great mystery, than any of us.  Living,

                breathing, smiling they were, but each with one foot and who knows how much

                consciousness firmly planted on the other side, that starry darkness from whence we come

                and whither we will go.  Fresh from birth, nigh unto death, bright-eyed, they were

                bookends there, mirrors of one another. 

                Cake, napkins, glasses in hand, we paused there in the midst of our momentary lives.

                “What shall we sing?” said someone to the silence, to the sunlight on the covers, to the

                stars.  It was the only question then, as now.  What on earth shall we sing?

There are two rites that we celebrate in this church that make me most grateful to be a Unitarian-Universalist, two ceremonies that in my mind embody the best of our faith.  The first is our baby blessing.  I love the way we welcome our children to life.  In a service that dates back to the nineteenth century, we bless the babies with a rose because our ancestors thought of our lives as possessing many of the properties of the natural world.  They saw that at birth the soul is like a seed, a little bundle of potential and that the purpose of our lives, said our forbearers, was to cultivate that seed so that our lives might blossom, like the flower, gracing the world with beauty. 

I love that when we welcome our children we recite together the articles of our faith, that each of us is precious, each, if we use our gifts wisely, a potential redeemer.  My favorite part of the service, though, is when I get to escort the little ones down the center aisle, into your midst, so that you are literally enveloping them with your love as you welcome them into the great family of all souls.  That part always reminds me of a saying that the rabbis had.  They used to say that each of us, when we walk through the world, is accompanied by an angel that walks out in front of us and, as we walk through the world, the angel says, “Make way, make way for the image of God!”  That’s how I see our service of baby dedication.  I see us as herald angels crying, “Make way for the image of God.”

In a time when so much religion conspires to belittle and degrade humanity, I’m grateful that our baby blessing bears simple but eloquent witness to the dignity of man.

The other rite that makes me proud to be a Unitarian-Universalist is our memorial service.  I’m always so moved by how we say goodbye to our loved ones when they die, how we take time to honor them by telling their stories, by remembering all the ways, large and small, that they used their time on this earth to bless the world, to bless us.  Remembering, for example, how Sharon Fowler-Nuosu loved her grandchildren, how Bob Myers devoted himself to the Vietnamese community in Columbia Heights, how Charlie Mason founded a law school, how Louie Russell wound the clock in our clock tower every Sunday and how it just hasn’t worked the same since he left us.

In other traditions, much time is spent at a memorial service making promises about the next life.  In our tradition, we take time to honor this one.  That’s what I like about them.  Apparently I’m not the only one.  More than one church member has confided to me that they play hooky from work whenever we have a memorial service at church, even if they don’t know the deceased.  I’ve heard of wedding crashers before, but not memorial service crashers.  [Laughter]  And they come for good reason.  They come because they love to hear the stories, the remarkable ways that people find meaning and love in their lives. 

The way I see it, the memorial service brings us full circle, back to the baby blessing.  In the blessing we look with wonder into the child’s cherubic face and tell them they’re precious, tell them they’re a gift.  But perhaps even those of us not normally given to skepticism might ask, “But what of our imperfect and broken adult lives?  Do they really live up to the potential that we herald for them at the beginning, in the blessing?  Are we really a blessing to the world?”  That’s what’s so powerful to me about the memorial service; no matter how common or broken our lives are, most of us do, indeed, discover our own way to bless the world.

And so, just as we escort our loved ones into the world like herald angels, so too do we gently deliver them into the mystery to come with those same words on our lips, “Make way for the image of God.”  These two rites, the baby blessing and the memorial service, they are bookends, if you will, of our mortal existence, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega.  But what about what happens in between?  What about our lives?  Given the certainty of their impermanence, and the assurance of their preciousness, what are we to do with our lives?

Insight into such questions rarely comes to us in a straightforward way, in a neat package.  More often than not, insight comes couched in a cryptic story from an ancient wisdom tradition or in a fleeting epiphany in the midst of our mundane lives.  So allow me to share with you, then, one cryptic story and one epiphany.

In the Zen Buddhist tradition, they tell this story:  Once upon a time, a famous Zen master came to the front door of the king’s palace to see the king.  Owing to his fame, none of the guards tried to stop the master as he entered; they merely bowed as he walked by.  The Zen master strode through the castle, making his way to the throne room where he found the king, seated.  “What do you want?” asked the king suspiciously.  “Sir,” replied the master, “I would merely like a place to sleep in this inn.”  “Ah, but you are mistaken, good teacher; this is not an inn,” said the king; “it is my palace.”  “Pardon me, Your Majesty,” said the Zen master; “May I ask who owned the palace before you?”  “My father,” replied the king, “but he is dead now.”  “And who owned it before him?”  “My grandfather, but he too is dead.”  “Then tell me, Your Majesty,” said the Zen master.  “This place where people live for a short time and then move on, did I hear you say that it is not an inn?”

I like this story for lots of reasons, not the least of which because it imagines a day when the spiritual leaders of a nation who have access to the king might actually speak a prophetic and challenging word to that king.  [Laughter and applause]  That’s one reason I like the story.  But more to the point of this sermon, I like the image of the world as an inn, a temporary lodging.  If we look at it this way it suggests a couple of things. 

First, if the world is indeed an inn, then each of us is both guest and host, a visitor and therefore slightly out of place and, at the same time, an innkeeper, the one most fully at home, the one responsible for the inn.  Comfortably at home, yet just passing through; that is about as good a summary as I can think of the paradox that is our existence.  We are both guest and host in this world and there is an ethic that is suggested from this way of seeing the world.  If the world is an inn then the story suggests that our lives are to be dedicated to the art of hospitality.

Hospitality is one of the most radical forms of love, for it is given to a visitor who, because he is dislocated, places a radical trust in the host to care for him.  What if we all saw ourselves as innkeepers in this world and our fellow human beings as travelers, people depending on us for hospitality, people trusting us with their lives, trusting us to provide a safe place, a warm hearth, and people, in turn, on whom we depend for our own safekeeping.  I am only beginning to imagine the kind of solidarity that emerges from seeing each of us simultaneously as guest and host, bound in a network of mutual care and responsibility.  Practice, then, the fragile and holy act of hospitality.

That was the story.  Now for the epiphany.  In our reading this morning, Victoria Safford describes an occasion that she had to consider life’s meaning in the context of its transience.  The occasion, you remember, is a small bedside birthday party for an elderly friend who is dying.  Needing to free up a hand to cut the birthday cake, Safford lays her little baby down on the pillow, face to face with her dying friend.  Just imagine that sight for a moment.  “There they were,” says Safford, “a plump, apple-cheeked cherry tomato of a babe, smiling, and a silver thin, hollow-eyed, translucent elder, smiling.  Living, breathing they were,” she continues, “but each with one foot and who knows how much consciousness firmly planted on the other side, that starry darkness from whence we come and whither we will go.” 

Watching these two side by side, the busy mortals fell silent for just long enough to contemplate the meaning of what they beheld, the circle of life, its transience.  And then, out of the silence and because it is, after all, a birthday party, someone asks, ‘What shall we sing?’  That’s precisely the question, says Safford.  Given the newborn child and the dying grandmother, given life’s beginning and its end, what shall we do in between?  What shall we sing?  What is it that gives joy and meaning to our lives?  What is it that makes our hearts sing?  How can our song be a blessing not only to us but to others?  What shall we sing, says Safford.  It was the only question then and it is the only question now.

I think I’ve talked to you before about the thin places, haven’t I?  The ancient Celts said there were certain times and certain places where the boundary between the earthly and the heavenly realms was more permeable, was thin, and therefore communion between the two realms was easier.  I think Safford is describing one of those thin places and I think All Souls Day, today, is another one of those thin places, a time when the departed souls who loved us and whom we loved feel close to us again, when we have an opportunity to say once again, “Thank you,” to say once again, “I love you,” and a time when we have the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of our own lives in the light of their impermanence.

In closing, let me make one invitation.  This month, Reverend Lyngood and I want to invite you into an opportunity to consider our lives in the context of their impermanence.  Starting later this month, we’ll be leading a series of classes in which each of us has the opportunity to consider our own impermanence, our own death and to plan, in fact, our memorial service, to write our own obituary.  At first it sounds like a morbid task, but what we find, actually, is that it invites people into deeper life.  Check out your November newsletter for more details about this class. 

For friends, the church is the community where we come to be welcomed lovingly into the world, sent gently into the next and, in the meantime, it’s where we try to discern what song it is that we shall sing.  May it be a beautiful one.       Amen.