Returning Home Again...

The leaves are changing here on these hills and the geese are flying above and calling out their dramatic songs. We remember our roots in the Jewish tradition in the celebration of the Holy Day, Yom Kippur this past Friday. We also honor our source of earth-centered wisdom in celebrating the Fall Equinox – a balancing of light and dark on that same day. It is time to return home again, to our congregations and to ourselves. It is a time of remembering and a balancing of our actions. Have we said or done things that we regret? Are there areas of our lives that need to be examined? This is a turning of the year and a time for reflection.

balancing change and constancy...

There is something infinitely healing
in the repeated refrains of nature –
the assurance that dawn comes after night,
and spring after the winter.

~ Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder ~

Spring did come. Actually summer has arrived in Vermont...and it is hot! And it is beautiful. We are involved in a continual changing process within ourselves and all around us. In just a matter of days or sometimes what feels like hours, plants have grown and flowers have bloomed. I was reminded recently that Rachel Carson, the scientist and writer who invigorated the environmental movement with her book Silent Spring, was a Unitarian Universalist. Yet another leader and activist in our midst! The UU Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee is on the path to becoming a Green Sanctuary and has been holding an annual Rachel Carson Memorial Dinner and interfaith gathering each year as part of this effort. Rev. Patricia Cahill, the local Episcopal priest who will be speaking at the event this year says that ‘As we cope with the environmental effects of dramatic climate change, people of faith need to become beacons of hope in the world. We can respond to the call of God’s spirit in actions that help to mend Creation; a good place to light that spark is through Rachel Carson’s writings especially Sense of Wonder.’

Every piece that we work on, no matter how small it seems, does matter. We are involved in an interconnected and intricate web of creation that needs our care and attention. Rachel Carson wrote that “it is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.” As our physical senses are heightened on these beautiful spring days, let us also allow our sense of both wonder and humility to emerge as we walk through the daily ritual of our days.

Everyone Needs Beauty...

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,
places to play in and pray in,
where nature may heal and give strength
to body and soul alike.”
~ John Muir ~

Yes to John Muir’s words. Yes, we need beauty as well as bread. We need beauty in our daily lives, whether it is a painting or image we can rest our eyes on and gather nourishment we can take with us out into the world, or a book of new poems we have just discovered that will sustain us as we do our work. It might be an unexpected conversation or connection we have with someone. We must be nourished and bread is not enough. Our souls must be nourished; our hearts must be fed. In one of David Whyte’s poems he says: “people are starving and one good word will feed a thousand.” I believe he is speaking about the nourishment of our souls. There is a way that we are starving in this society. We are bombarded by images and words every day, yet we are hungry. We need places to play and be creative in. We need spaces and times when we can pray. When I enter our sanctuary for worship or when I sink to the floor for our meditation circle in the ballroom, I do feel nourished. The beauty of our spaces is nourishing and it can sustain us. But John Muir sends us outdoors “where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” His temple, his church was the forest. He stood among the ancient redwoods and spoke of it as a cathedral of tall and majestic beings emanating peace and wisdom. If you have stood in a grove of redwood trees, you know what he is speaking about. Or if you have stood at the edge of the sea and looked out into that great rolling expanse of waves that never ceases to move and change, a never ending cycle of change and power. As a congregation, we are involved in a never ending cycle of change and power together. It is true. Together we create communities and sustain them with our gifts. And these gifts are many and unexpected. Each one of us is needed. Each one of us has something to give and receive. We might not know what that will be on a given day but there are reasons we are together; there are gifts to be heard in the stories of all of us. There are gifts to be found in everyone we meet. We need our congregations, our churches to be sacred places where we can be ourselves and perhaps places where we can become someone new. We can be reborn here in these communities of love and longing. There is a place inside us all that longs to create and give to the world. Let us offer ourselves, and our gifts. There is no doubt that we can make the world better and we need to begin today.
blessings, Rev. Telos

Local and Global Justice...

Last Sunday was Justice Sunday for UU congregations around the country. I collaborated with the chair of our Social Action Committee (in Chester, VT) to offer a service that focused on Local and Global actions we can take. The Local action came in the form of offering people the opportunity to purchase Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs to reduce their energy bill and to "green" their homes. A member of the congregation agreed to purchase light bulbs for the 14 lights that illuminate our sanctuary. We can be more environmentally conscious, more green on a local level; right here in our sanctuaries, in our houses. We can buy bulbs that will allow us to decrease our energy use now. Education, worship, community connections and physical changes, all important steps we can take together. Every step we take matters.

Our Global Action was to unite with congregations around the country to highlight and take action toward reducing the violence and devastation in Darfur. As Unitarian Universalists today, ministry has become interwoven with social action and truly living into our principles. I was with a local minister last week and he shared that three years ago, ending the violence in Darfur was the one issue that the fifteen clergy there could agree on. It went beyond differences in theology and belief. They sent a letter to their local newspaper signed by clergy from all denominations and traditions. This was three years ago. We need those letters now. The killing hasn’t stopped in Darfur; it has increased in the past year.

This is a report from the organization, Human Rights Watch. (http://www.hrw.org/) “Since early 2003, Sudanese government forces and ethnic militia called “Janjaweed” have engaged in an armed conflict with rebel groups called the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). As part of its operations against the rebels, government forces have waged a systematic campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against the civilian population who are members of the same ethnic groups as the rebels. Sudanese government forces and the Janjaweed militias burned and destroyed hundreds of villages, killed and caused the deaths of at least 200,000 people, and raped and assaulted thousands of women and girls. As of January 2007, approximately two million displaced people live in camps in Darfur and at least 232,000 people have fled to neighboring Chad, where they live in refugee camps."

I realize that this information is sobering and terrible to hear but we are being asked as people of faith, people who are committed to social justice, to equality, to furthering peace in areas of violence, to do something. We are being asked to write letters to our legislators, to the current administration so that the situation in Darfur is not forgotten. We need to educate ourselves and others about the situation that has meant 200,000 deaths and millions of displaced people so that the violence can end. We need to ask ourselves why we aren’t reading about Darfur in our newspapers, why aren’t we hearing more about this situation, this place in the world?

But there is hope in this story. The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (http://www.uusc.org/) is part of the Save Darfur Coalition, an alliance of 167 faith-based, advocacy, and humanitarian organizations pressing for a stronger, international peacekeeping force to stop the genocide that already has claimed more than 200,000 lives and displaced 2.5 million people. The Million Voices for Darfur campaign delivered 1 million postcards to President Bush last May as a common voice in saying, the violence in Darfur must end. Together we are making a difference. President of the UUSC, Charlie Clements: “When a million people from across the country can speak with one voice on this issue, it sends a powerful message. But we must acknowledge that much more work needs to be done to reach our ultimate goal of ending the genocide in Darfur and bringing peace to the region.”

Justice means that we need to keep the chalice of hope lit, even if it is a small chalice and we are but a few voices. We are not alone. There are thousands of Unitarian Universalists learning about the devastation and violence in Darfur and taking action. We are holding this pain together. And we are going to take action together. We are individuals committed to having less violence and more justice in the world, as people who know that a letter to the editor, to our representatives does matter. It is difficult to be working on all fronts at the same time and keeping the global world and our local one in our minds and hearts but there isn’t a choice. We have to live into our commitment to being religious liberals. It is the realization that we have no choice but to promote justice.
Action Steps We can take:
Go to the UU Service Committee web site link
http://www.uusc.org/news/alert020607.html
there are ways to call your representatives and encourage divestment, push for a UN peacekeeping force and increase awareness.

When I was in college, some of us knew that we needed to work to push the university to divest from South Africa because we knew that the system of apartheid had to end. We new that even though we were a group of white college students in New Hampshire, far from the towns and roads and struggles of African peoples, and people of color across the planet, we had to at least make the effort. Just our university divesting wasn’t going to stop the system of apartheid. But if enough universities and corporations divested, then it would make a difference. The government would have to respond. And they did. There is a call for companies to divest from Sudan in order to pressure the government, in order to shine a global light on the situation. Millions of people died in the concentration camps during World War II. 800,000 people died during the crisis in Rwanda. 200,000 people have died in Darfur. We know the words that need to be said and the actions that need to be taken. Justice Sunday is a way for UU congregations to come together and be united around a common issue of concern. It is a reminder that we are not alone in this step by step process of changing the world. It is hard to do these actions ourselves and feel like they will really make a difference, really save any lives. They are bound to. One more step, we will take one more step. One more prayer, we will say one more prayer, one more song, we will sing one more song until every song is heard by everyone we will sing one more song. The light is shining in the darkness and will not be overcome. May it be ever so.

Hope For the Future

Last Sunday, we had a service at the First Universalist Parish called "A Service For All of Us" that involved people ages 2 and up - an Intergenerational Service in all aspects. What impressed and moved me the most were the youth who shared with the congregation their learning and reflections of other faith traditions. They had studied Quakerism, Catholicism and Islam through the Neighboring Faiths Curriculum so we heard a Muslim call to prayer, sat together for three minutes of silence in the Quaker tradition, and listened to the Nicene Creed being recited. Where is the common ground between these faith traditions and Unitarian Universalism? How did it feel for them to participate in a Quaker meeting or witness a Catholic service? Their responses were honest, thoughtful and I found, incredibly inspiring. They are the hope of our future. We need to find common ground as people of faith, as neighbors across the road and the ocean. We must find and celebrate what we hold in common. And confront our own fears of difference, join in healing our past experiences of religion that might prevent us being able to see the commonalities. There are many Unitarian Universalists who have had negative, traumatic and difficult experiences with another faith tradition. This is true. And as part of a UU congregation, we can support each other in the journey through that experience that may have been painful, into another way of seeing, another way of connecting with what is sacred to us. In those wonderful words of Rumi: "There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground." I felt honored to participate in this service with these young people for they were voices and open minds that reminded me of this reality. There is hope for the future.

Stillness of the Earth

this sermon was given at First Universalist Parish in Chester, Vermont.

The prayer of the Ute Indians begins: "Earth teach me stillness as the grasses are stilled with light." Well, there have been some nights recently that weren't still. The wind has whipped around our house. The wind chime outside the door rings and rings. There have been some wild nights, at least in Saxton’s River, Vermont. And then there would be times that were completely still. There were also times of silence and stillness. "Find a stillness, hold a stillness, let the stillness carry me." I’ve been humming that chant for the past week in preparing this sermon and realized that there were three pieces that were involved and that each required something of me. Find a stillness. I imagined what it felt like for me to have lost something and be looking for it. Frustrating! Where is that piece of paper, those glasses, my keys? And I end up going around the house, trying to re-trace my steps, it takes effort and what a relief when it, the lost thing is found. Here it is! And finding stillness can feel like that I think. It takes concentration and may end up being frustrating and come upon us unexpectedly. A moment to sit and be silent. A moment to appreciate the quiet or the sounds. Stillness isn’t necessarily going to be in silence. There might be quite a lot of noise and activity happening and that stillness is inside. So when we find that lost stillness if it has been lost, then…we have to hold it. The work isn’t over. Hold the stillness. Hold the stillness? How do we do that? For this piece, I think it is good to have silence. It helps to be in a sanctuary. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes: “Not insulation of place, but independence of spirit is essential, and it is only as the garden, the cottage, the forest, and the rock, are a sort of mechanical aids to this, that they are of value. Think alone, and all places are friendly and sacred.” For him, these places and elements of nature – the forest, the rock were needed in order to remember and gain insight, divine insight. He goes on to warn the audience not to use solitude to the exclusion of society. Both are needed. We live in the world, in a community, in the public. He says don’t fool yourselves. “You can very soon learn all that society can teach you for one while. Its foolish routine, an indefinite multiplication of balls, concerts, rides, theatres, can teach you no more than a few can. Then accept the hint of shame, of spiritual emptiness and waste, which true nature gives you, and retire, and hide; lock the door; shut the shutters; then welcome falls the imprisoning rain, -- dear hermitage of nature. Re-collect the spirits. Have solitary prayer and praise. Digest and correct the past experience; and blend it with the new and divine life.” Dear hermitage of nature, dear earth. The stillness of the earth. Emerson doesn’t shy away from saying that there will be perhaps shame – from being too much in the world and letting it rule us. And that we need to accept that shame, that spiritual emptiness and waste, which knowing our true selves can reveal. We do need to know ourselves, our true natures. It is good to remember he wrote this in 1838 and he is speaking to a group of intellectuals, a literary crowd that might really need the reminder to hide and shutter the windows. They might really need to retreat into themselves and deal with what they might find. They needed some silence. And they needed, we all need time to heal. We all need the stillness.

We need to be close to the earth, whether it’s in our backyards, in the mountains, and we need to remember to look up and see the beautiful moon shining down; we need that time. In Nancy Wood’s poem she finds her help in the mountain where she takes herself to heal. And the stream give her comfort and the trees keep her company. By allowing ourselves to be held and becoming a part of the earth - becoming the water, becoming the stone - we can be transformed.


“So must I stay for a long time
Until I have grown from the rock
And the stream is running through me
And I cannot tell myself from one tall tree.
Then I know that nothing touches me
Nor makes me run away.
My help is in the mountain
That I take away with me.”

In our Religious Education program, our older children in the Neighboring Faiths class are exploring common ground they have found in the faith traditions they are exploring. They are studying Islam this morning, they went to a service at the Catholic Church and they attended Quaker meeting a few weeks ago. Prayer is common to all three but there is quite a variety of ways to pray. What I immediately thought of was silence – moments of silence in a group, in a service – this is common ground. Or if not silence then stillness. This is what Quaker meeting is all about and is one of the reasons I particularly loved attending. Both because we sat in silence for many minutes, most of an hour usually and because each voice that spoke was valued as coming from an inspired place, coming from a still place. And those words needed to be shared in that moment, that morning with that group of people. And the rest of the people there are holding the stillness in order for them to speak. It’s a relationship. We have our time of silence together at every service. Many would say it’s the most important part for connecting with each other, for connecting with whatever power or energy sustains you. In that moment of stillness, unexpected insights might come in; you might hear your own voice. So we find that stillness, we hold it. And we are holding it for not only ourselves but others. And with all three of these tasks – “tasks of stillness” I’m calling them, a bit of faith is needed. Knowing, hoping you will be able to find some stillness, holding that for yourself, for others around you. And then…and this is the hardest part of all – let the stillness carry me. Let the stillness carry me. Imagine when you are swimming and you turn on your back for a moment and let the water carry you. I actually can’t stay that way for more than a few seconds, I find it very disconcerting! But letting the stillness carry us is again, letting that still, small voice speak.

Muhammad Yunus heard a small voice (or maybe it was a giant voice!) say to him, you can help to end this grueling poverty with just even a dollar of your own money. Give your money to someone who needs it. And if you put your faith in people then, amazing things will happen. He brought an idea to life in 1974 and then thirty-two years later he won the Nobel Peace Prize. His name has become a familiar one but it wasn’t when he began. He was teaching economics in Southern Bangladesh that was devastated by famine. When he began seeing all of the people that began coming to the capital – everyone looked the same. Old and young and they were starving. He couldn’t just go back and teach lofty economic theories in his classes, he needed to understand a poor person’s life and then figure out a solution. Gandhi’s words: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Muhammad Yunus has been called a revolutionary for coupling capitalism with social responsibility. He had many who thought he was crazy for what he was doing. Offering money and loans to people who had nothing? He transformed what economics in rural villages could be. And I know he must have had some moments of stillness, some “Quaker time” as it is sometimes called, where he could listen. And then he had to heed the voice. I think he felt like he had to do something, anything to combat the poverty. And he empowered people by making the money a loan – not with any time frame on paying it back but again, putting his faith in them. He saw them as individuals with the potential to transform their own lives with a little help from him.

And the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. We just celebrated his birthday and we all know that his dream, his vision was and is still a radical one. Yes, all citizens of the United States can vote and yes, our schools are integrated. But the devastation of Hurricane Katrina is a striking reminder that we are far from an equal society. The number of African American men in prison today is staggering. The infant mortality rate for African American children is high and the statistics go on and on. These are hard and overwhelming truths to contemplate. We have to live with them. But we can live with them together. We can talk about what we want to do as a congregation to combat poverty, to lend our dollar to a project or cause, to put our faith in someone. The last hymn we’ll sing today is in honor of his work: “I woke up this morning with my mind, it was stayed on freedom.” Muhammad Yunus knew that he would have an impact, a lasting impact if he gave a dollar to a person that he met in a village in Bangladesh. But I don’t think he was doing it for that reason. I don’t imagine he had any idea that thirty years later he would be accepting the Nobel Peace prize. He did it because it was the right thing to do. When Martin Luther King shared his “I Have a Dream Speech” that day in 1968, I don’t think he knew what might happen but he had to share his dream.
“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.” He spoke of transforming racism and prejudice and about faith. His faith, his sense of what had to be done, of how the society, this country needed to change, had to change was strong. It had to be!
“This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

It isn’t always clear to me what I should do. What action should I take? Give a donation to this cause? Write a letter to one of my representatives about an issue? There is so much to be done and it feels overwhelming. So I think it’s remembering that the small gestures do matter. Collecting canned goods to donate to the food shelf, volunteering at the teen center or the library, and...you probably know what I’m going to say – finding those moments of stillness and letting them carry you.
“Find a stillness, hold a stillness, let the stillness carry me. Find the silence, hold the silence, let the silence carry me.” There is a stillness when I am out among the pine trees and grasses. The trees sigh in the wind; it gently or vigorously bends their branches. But there is stillness. It’s there. I can let my breath out. (when I remember.) Sometimes when I’m inside a building or in my car, I feel like I am holding my breath. Waiting…always waiting to exhale. It’s as if by exhaling I am letting go and by letting go, things might fall apart? Perhaps. But it’s the letting go that those small voices can speak – that idea that someone might think is crazy or ahead of its time. The revolutionaries began as ordinary people living their lives and became revolutionary because there was something they needed to do and they couldn’t not do it. Muhammad Yunus. Martin Luther King, Jr. Each one of us. Those revolutionary acts of kindness, the willingness to be held, the faith to listen to the voice. Mary Oliver’s familiar words in her poem, The Journey that during a wild night that was already late enough she has to walk away from all the clatter, all of the people demanding her time and attention “and little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life you could save.”

In this new year…of remembering and beginning again, let’s remember to cherish any moments of stillness and let them carry us to new places, new awareness. Through the healing found in the mountains and land and earth, let us allow the earth to teach us kindness. Let us allow the stillness to bring us home.

May it be so.


Resources and Readings:

Earth Teach Me
A prayer from the
Ute Indians of North American

My Help Is In the Mountain
by Nancy Wood

The Way of the Heart by Henry J.M. Nouwen, theologian

"I Have a Dream" Speech by Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. on August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html

"Find a Stillness" and "Oh I Woke Up In the Morning", hymns from Singing The Living Tradition

The Journey by Mary Oliver

Keeping The Peace

This sermon was given Sunday, Dec. 10 at First Universalist Parish in Chester, Vermont.

We all began a pilgrimage. We are all on a journey that began a couple of weeks ago and will culminate at the end of December. The pilgrimage from Thanksgiving to Christmas. It’s a pilgrimage that everyone takes whether or not they believe in Jesus, whether or not they want to engage in the holiday spirit. It’s here, it has descended upon us. The stores and advertisements will not let us forget. But it is also the time of Advent – a time of waiting and preparation. And the concept of Advent can be expanded beyond the preparation for the birth of Jesus and its Christian frame. It is a time that can be used for looking back and reflecting on the year and looking inside. Catherine Doherty writes that “Advent is a time of standing still, and yet making a pilgrimage. It is an inner pilgrimage, a pilgrimage in which we don't use our feet. We stand still; yet, in a manner of speaking, we walk a thousand miles across the world - just because we chose to stand still.”
This time is often referred to as a time of “peace.” If you pick up a variety of holiday cards, the words inside often wish the receiver a peaceful season or year. May the peace of the holidays come to you and yours or something to that affect. And because it is a time of various religious traditions coming together, peace is often the common ground. If Merry Christmas or Happy Hannukah isn’t broad enough, wishing blessings for a year or time of peace is a safe bet. And a wonderful message! But what about peace and how do we actually get to having some moments or times of peace during this incredibly busy time of year? This is a time of year when we are bombarded by holiday music, decorations, advertisements, pressures. It is a shock to our systems that is introduced sometimes as early as Halloween! And amid all of the lights and music, it can sometimes be a hard and lonely time. Hard because we can be reminded of who in our family or community is not here this year. Hard because we can feel like we must participate in some way – buying or making gifts, giving more than we do normally, even feeling holiday cheeriness can be a pressure. It is a balancing act during these weeks. One aspect that I do appreciate is that religious and cultural traditions seem to come together more than other times of the year – Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice. The common threads between the faith traditions are there. And these weeks are a strong and powerful time for reflection, community and gratitude. And there is common ground - the coming of light, the coming together of communities, birthing of new life, new ideas. And the wish, the prayer for peace. Peace can be this common ground.

The peace poles are white with black lettering. They stand about eight feet high and usually have six sides. There is a peace pole in front of a UU church in Salt Lake City, Utah. There is a pole in front of a Buddhist temple in California. There is a peace pole on top of a hill at a retreat center in Vermont. The words on each of the sides says “May Peace Prevail On Earth” in Chinese, Russian, Korean, English. From the Peace Pole Project web site it reads “When you plant a Peace Pole in your community, you are linking with people all over the world who have planted their Poles in the same spirit of peace. Every Peace Pole proclaims the prayer May Peace Prevail on Earth in the language of the country and often four to six other languages as well. The more than 200,000 Peace Poles around the world are on all continents, in every country you can think of. They are in simple places, such as churches and gardens, and extraordinary ones, such as at the Pyramids of El Giza, Egypt or the Magnetic North Pole in Canada. They are promoting healing of conflict in places like Sarajevo and the Allenby Bridge between Israel and Jordan.” Bethlehem and Bagdad. Salt Lake City and Vermont. They serve as constant reminders for us to visualize and pray for world peace.

During a storm the only place of peace is the eye in the middle. A space in the middle that is calm when everything else is wild. The eye of the storm. In the middle of the storm where it is quiet is the eye. I just finished reading a book called The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It is a wild and fantastical tale about a 16 year old boy from India who ends up in a 24 foot life boat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger for about 7 months! The author makes no claims that this is a true story or that it is plausible. But what the boy and tiger must end up doing is inhabiting the same small space together in order for both to survive. A life boat in the middle of the ocean. And they have to come to a sense of peace about their predicament. It is essential that they keep the peace with each other in that 24 foot space! Neither is able to be and act in the ways they would normally act but must adapt and adapt to this wild situation. It is worth reading and a grand escape! And before the ocean adventure, the boy explores and adopts three faith traditions – Hinduism, Islam and Christianity and calls on God and gods of many names during his time at sea. He is a spiritual seeker at a very young age, exploring these three traditions and not wanting to settle on one, he embraces all of them. He prays on Friday at the mosque, he is there Sunday morning at the Catholic Church and he visits the Hindu temple. He finds common ground and decides he doesn’t have to choose – why can’t I be a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim? His faith is what saves him when he is lost at sea. He is on this long and fantastical pilgrimage. He finds a kind of peace as he prays whenever and however he can. And it was hard. Sometimes Pi doesn’t think he can go on. He is hungry and lonely and fearing for his life. “At such moments I tried to elevate myself. I would touch the turban I had made with the remnants of my shirt and I would say aloud, “This is God’s hat!...I would pat my pants and say aloud, “this is God’s attire.” I would point at the sky and say aloud, this is God’s ear.” And in this way I would remind myself of creation and my place in it. But God’s hat was always unraveling. God’s pants were falling apart. God’s cat was a constant danger…God’s ear didn’t seem to be listening.” He said that the darkness did always end up passing. Fish came along to be caught, the wind would shift and the sun would come up. And there was a point of light in his heart where God was, where his faith was that kept him going, that gave him strength through this pilgrimage of physical and spiritual survival.

Louise Diamond lives in Bristol, Vermont and she is the author of the Peace Book. She writes that there are basic assumptions underlying our society that go against peace and that by changing or challenging these assumptions, we can transform our society and ultimately the world. She writes that “a true culture of peace is based on four basic principles that promote trust, harmony, and healthy human relationships.” She offers four principles of Peace. (and you’ll be able to hear our UU principles within these!) The first, Community. “We come-in-unity first with ourselves, then with others, acknowledging we are all in this together, interconnected and interdependent. Therefore, what hurts one, hurts all. To honor the equal dignity and worth of all…and a commitment to social and economic justice.” Sound familiar? The interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. What happens in one corner of the world, of the web, impacts all of us.

Her second principle is Cooperation. Finding common ground. Knowing we will all win if we work together. Again, that web of interdependence. The third principle is Nonviolence. She writes “with dialogue and creative problem solving – and with a moral conviction to avoid the suffering caused by violence – we can address the toughest issues of our individual and collective lives.” And the fourth principle is Witness. With Life as our witness, families all are we. “Peace is a living presence within all of us,” she writes. “It is encoded in us as natural wisdom, our spiritual birthright.” There is a seed of peace in everyone and it is relating to that place. It takes work, I’m not suggesting it is easy. I was recently driving and late to a meeting so I was following a car quite closely. I kept having to put on my brakes but for some reason, it didn’t dawn on me that it was because I was following the car ahead of me too closely. Well, we get into the town and suddenly the driver stops suddenly in the middle of the road. I look behind me and several trucks had to stop. She gets out of her car and yells loudly at me to get off her blank tail and stop following her. I have kids in the car, she yells. She got back in her car and started driving again. I waited and followed at a safe distance, feeling really silly for having been yelled at in the middle of town by an irate mother. She was right. I had been following too closely. I wasn’t driving safely. It wasn’t safe for her to get out in the middle of the road either but if I’d kept my distance that might not have happened. So I would be a few minutes late to the meeting. It is better and more important to keep the peace.
UU Minister Rev. Rob Manning reflected in a sermon he wrote four years ago that “This is one of the great times of the Christian calendar, a month of contemplation and spiritual preparation. If the birth of Christ is the coming into the world of light, hope, and peace, what are these things in our world today? How do we make room for them within ourselves, among us as people, and among the nations of the world? This is the time, the opportunity, for all of Christendom to contemplate and spiritually prepare for the coming of light, and hope, and peace. It happens every year, you know. Advent is on the calendar every year. But advent as a season tends to be something like the Chicago Cubs World Series: it’s always scheduled but it never really comes. Christmas always comes. The entire economy would be ruined if some grinch somehow managed to make Christmas not come. Christmas always comes, but Advent never comes.”

It’s true. Christmas does come and it goes. It comes early! It sweeps into the stores and the neighborhoods in a flood and sparkle of lights and colors – signs that proclaim and do not allow anyone to forget that it is Christmas. But I think Rob is right. Advent doesn’t actually come. This time of waiting and preparation, this time of quiet preparation and reflection is not rewarded usually with a flash of insight and a magnificent change. The light doesn’t actually flood the world in sudden brilliance that we are all witness to. At least not literally. But we can welcome in the quiet peace of advent. What a welcome opportunity to reflect, to bring in a bit of peace amid the flash and overly bright decorations and too loud music. By the time the 25th comes, we will have been bombarded by sight and sound. We have seen so many lights…advent may be a waiting for light to come in the darkness but it’s pretty bright already! That is why the candlelight services that are held take on a new meaning. We have to turn out our lights. We have to rest for a few minutes together. We have to be in the darkness. We have to feel the peace that already exists. Peace is here now, every breath is a prayer. I used to say that statement a lot during a time when I did not feel peaceful and needed those words to calm me.

But when I open the paper, it seems that the opposite of peace is what I see and read about in the larger world. Peace does not seem to be beginning, it seems to be hiding. Rob says Advent never comes. Peace doesn’t seem to come either. At least not everywhere, not all the time. But I think it’s like love. A small bit of peace goes a long way. A peaceful gesture towards someone. Not responding in anger to the woman who got out of her car. It took will on my part. I don’t like getting yelled at. No one does. But peace at the beginning of the day…peace in the middle…peace around the edges. Like a giant weaving we are all and each helping to make. We are all helping to weave it. John Lennon’s words are in there: “Imagine all the people, living life in peace....” It can’t hurt to keep that thought as the eye of the storm, as the spark of light, as that prayer.

Peace Pilgrim began walking in 1953. Yes, she did have an epiphany, a revelation, a grand insight on a mountain top. It doesn’t always happen so dramatically but her life took a drastic turn so I think it needed to come as a dramatic. She knew she had to dedicate her life to peace. That was all there was to it. She heeded the light that came flooding in – the message was. You need to start walking for peace. And you don’t need to take anything with you. You will need to have faith that people will offer you food, that you will find places to rest, that you will be taken care of. So she embarked wearing only a blue tunic that said “peace pilgrim” on the front and 25,000 miles for peace on the back. She actually added that after she had walked that many miles. She was a remarkable woman. Walking for peace…yes, she did begin during the Korean War and wanted the war to end. But it was more about peace between individual people, between each other that she wanted to promote. She said that “Peace is a state of mind and a path of action. It is a concept, a goal, an experience, a path. Peace is an ideal. It is both intangible and concrete, complex and simple, exciting and calming. Peace is personal and political; it is spiritual and practical, local and global. It is a process and an outcome, an above all a way of being.” Peace begins with me. Peace begins with us. Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. There are some great stories about her travels, her walk, her pilgrimage over many years and thousands of miles.

“Advent is a short season, yet it covers a long distance,” Catherine de Hueck Doherty writes. “It is the road of a soul from Nazareth to Bethlehem. It seems such a short distance as we are accustomed to thinking of distances. Yet it is a road into infinity, into eternity. It has a beginning, but no end. In truth, Advent is the road of the spiritual life which all of us must start if we do not want to miss the way. So, then. Let us enter, you and I, into the pilgrimage that doesn't take us from home. For ours is a journey of the spirit, which is a thousand times harder than a journey of the feet. Let us 'arise and go'.”

And we won’t know. We have no idea where our pilgrimage this year will take us. Most likely not a lifeboat in the ocean with a tiger…we probably won’t don a blue tunic and start walking for peace, at least not all the way across the country. But something unexpected might happen. A point of light might cross our path and it is so bright we have to notice it. A pilgrimage that doesn’t take us from our houses but leads us down new and unexpected paths. I’ll meet you there.

Blessed Be and Amen.

Sources drawn from for this sermon:
The Peace Book by Louise Diamond
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Sermon written in 2002 by UU Minister Rev. Rob Manning
reflection on Advent by Catherine de Hueck Doherty
Peace Pole Project - http://www.worldpeace.org/peacepoles.html