Thanks Be For Those Holy Times...

Excerpts from sermon given Sunday, Nov. 19 at the Walpole Unitarian Church

Holy times can happen in the kitchen, the sidewalk, the path in the woods. Life is holy. It certainly isn’t confined to what happens between these walls or the walls of any temple, mosque or church. But why is it that sometimes, we are caught by a quickening of the heart as we behold a painting, orange leaves against blue sky, the back of a whale as it gently graces the surface of the water, someone’s eyes shining with excitement? What are these moments about? Why might we consider them holy? In the gathering of these moments, as Joyce Rupp says – she discovered with surprise how quickly her inner room became “a harvest place of gold.”

“Holy becomes the quickened breath; we celebrate life’s interval.” Life’s interval. These are words from the hymn, Thanks Be For These. The time in between the big and undeniable moments. The interval is the time in between. Holy becomes the quickened breath. When does our breath quicken? For me, it has quickened when I realize I am in a holy moment, an interval. This Thursday many of us will celebrate Thanksgiving. We will most likely be sharing a meal with other people, expressing gratitude. And someone just shared with me that they have an "unThanksgiving" day where they can wear and do whatever they want. Never mind about turkey! Pajamas and knitting and chocolate anyone? “I do the very best I know how. I do the very best I can.” Abraham Lincoln, the president that finally said yes to Sarah Hale – Yes, we need a day that the country celebrates together and is thankful. And could our thanksgiving prayer extend beyond the day, out into every day. Every day is a day for thanksgiving – a giving of thanks.

Several years ago, I had the privilege of attending a workshop in Vermont led by healer from Peru. His name was Puma and he was 21 years old. I had expected I think someone much older – an elder, a wise one, steeped in wisdom as evidenced by graying hair and a lined face. This man was young, very young. And wise. Beginning when Puma was six years old, he began his training by his grandfather to become a healer. What I remember most about meeting him was his smile. It seemed like he was always smiling. And he breathed a sense of peace and well-being. He is a Quechua Indian from the central Andes - people who are making daily offerings to the land, to the natural world and believe that they are in communion with these forces. What I learned and witnessed was that all of Puma’s life was holy. If he was sitting and eating breakfast, when he was playing his wooden flute, when he was walking down the path. He was teaching us to create offerings, and to allow time. All of the time we spent together was holy time.

There were about twenty of us and he led us through a training and ritual of creating gratitude offerings that are then burned or buried. You create the offerings in pairs – two of you sitting across from each other. One brings the other a few seeds and petals, pebbles and sugar to the one creating the offering and they create a beautiful design on white paper. I had given this workshop as a gift to my brother so he and I were partnered in creating our Pujas. When the offerings are finished, the paper is folded in a certain pattern, tied with a string and then a flower and a dollar bill is placed under the string. The Peruvian indigenous people have done what I believe is an amazing job at incorporating Western religious beliefs with their own, and preserving their own ways of praying and honoring the land. Every being in nature is alive to them – the stones and mountains are living beings that they call by intimate name. “Apu Camel's Hump" - grandfather Camel’s Hump, grandfather Mansfield, grandfather Machu Piccu. And the bodies of water are female – momma Champlain, momma Connecticut, momma Atlantic. Every element in nature is alive and is meant to be honored and offered blessings of gratitude to. There is this continual communion with everything. For a time after I did the workshop with Puma, I kept a bowl of flower petals by my door and would offer a blessing each morning as I left my house. Craig and I offered a blessing of petals as we crossed the Connecticut River when we first arrived back here. As we crossed from Canada into Vermont, a flurry of color, of petals floated out of our window and down into the river. We wanted to offer thanks and gratitude for a safe journey home.

Communion, rituals of connecting with a source larger than ourselves, the ingesting of bread to symbolize a connection. It is not the bread itself but the energy we infuse into that bread. We are part of a body. We are part of a community. We are connected. Communion, union with others. Unitarian Universalists have re-claimed communion for themselves. We have said – we can re-envision these rituals to be broader, to be meaningful for us today. Communion does not need to be limited to the Christian understanding but can be a relationship we are in. And we may be in communion with nature, with the land. We may be in communion with God, with an unseen presence larger than ourselves. And we are in communion with each other. When I sat in the grove at Deer Park Monastery and watched Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh drink his cup of steaming tea, it was a moment of communion. The only sounds were the soft rustling of leaves, an occasional bird call. In those moments, time stops. I felt a sense of oneness, of connection. It was a holy time. There is a smile, a certain peace on a person’s face that to me, indicates communion, a union with a sense of oneness.

Jim MacLaren’s face had that peaceful quality. He is a man with an amazing story. He was in college and a star athlete – a football player, and he was biking through a city when he had this sudden realization that something was about to happen to him. Right after that he saw the grill of a bus coming toward him. He woke up in the hospital not remembering anything and had to have his leg amputated below the knee. Well, he didn’t let the fact that he didn’t have part of his leg stop him. He went on to compete in the Iron Man competitions and to become a world-class athlete. One night a few years later, he was packing for a race and again had this wave of feeling like something was going to happen. Actually, that his life was going to be blessed in some way. He had a premonition, a feeling, a sense that his life was about to change for the good. He went to the race and while he was biking, he saw a car coming toward him again. In that moment, he thought, if I peddle faster, maybe I can beat the car. And then everything went black. Again, he woke up in the hospital and this time he was paralyzed from the neck down. When I saw him speaking in this documentary, he said that he had this sense that his life was going to be blessed, that something amazing was going to happen to him. What happened was that he became paralyzed from the neck down. And he went on this time to advocate for athletes and people with physical challenges. The Challenged Athletes Foundation grew out of his friends coming together quickly to raise funds for his recovery and organizing the San Diego Triathlon Challenge – to make sure people with physical challenges – not “disabilities”, not handicaps, but challenges. So that people that have different physical abilities can enjoy sports that anyone else. As I listened to Jim talk and watched his face, I realized why I felt so amazed. I knew why I was so touched by him. He was grateful for what had happened to him. He felt blessed. He felt like something spiritual had happened to him, was meant to happen to him. And to be able to see the reality of a car hitting you and causing you to become paralyzed from the neck down as a blessing is truly incredible! Thanks be for that attitude of acceptance. And what he was also saying, asking for was not pity. He was challenging people to the opposite – instead of feeling sorry for someone who we believe is less fortunate because they have a physical challenge, he was saying – we have taken hold of our lives and are making them better. Do the same. The Dalai Lama says: “Basically, we are all the same human beings. That is what makes it possible for us to understand each other and to develop friendships and good relations.” It takes a willingness to surrender our own sense of protection, our boundaries, our frame that says we might be different than each other, and allowing our hearts to be open. It is remembering that we can be in communion with each other, and with all of life, all the time. All of time is holy time.

I will close with the words of Joyce Rupp:

“November gestures with a wrinkled brown hand, beckons me wisely to consider those fleeting moments of grace, in things quickly passing: A walk on a musky-wooded path, a cup of coffee silently savored, a birdsong in the squeaky hours of dawn, the gentle touch of a hand, a loving letter from a grateful stranger, a fading crescent moon in a royal blue sky. I turn to gather finely layered remnants like these in the come and go of my days, and discover, with surprise, how quickly my inner room is a harvest of gold.”
Blessed Be and Amen.

Sources and Gratitude:
Out of the Ordinary by Joyce Rupp
Emmanuel's Gift - video documentary
http://www.challengedathletes.org/
Thank You, Sarah - the story of the woman who saved Thanksgiving by Laurie Halse Anderson

Thank you to Puma and the other people who participated in his workshop and gratitude to Thich Nhat Hanh for continuing to be a source of inspiration.