First Parish Sermon Archive

“GOT HOPE?”

 

The Sermon at the First Parish in Wayland, Mass. (UU)

By The Rev. Ken Sawyer

On March 11, 2012

 

          In October I gave a sermon “In Praise of What Sustains.” It was an update of a sermon I had given long before, and looking back over the years I am aware that it is one of my recurring themes: the attempt to help us remember and be grateful for and take advantage of things that buoy the human spirit, especially when life gets hard.

          It was on my mind again this church year because most of our minds were, and have been, on the tragic events of last July, when a wonderful, much loved and admired 18-year-old lifelong member of the congregation, Lauren Dunne Astley, was murdered. For those of you who were not here, the memorial service was attended by about 1,300 people, who filled this room and, with audio-visual equipment, the room downstairs, a large room across the street, and the lawn.

          Copies of that October service are available on the rack just inside the front door of the parish house, by request, or on line at our web site. I will give you a one-paragraph précis in a moment. But today we look at the same matter writ large, so large that one wishes no one ever had to face it: how does one recover from something as grievous as losing a child, and in that way, or anything that awful, if anything is.

          Some of you, like me, have known the parents, Mary and Malcolm, for many years, and were involved in the remarkable effort to host the crowd that attended the service. But others of you have little or no familiarity with the family or the tragedy; so lest you think me insensitive, to be bringing up the death with both parents here, as they are — and, we are grateful to say, have been most Sundays this year — let me say that:

          It is the custom in this congregation, as in many UU congregations, to put up for bid at a service auction the right to choose the theme and/or title of a sermon by the minister. This year the winning bid was that of Mary Dunne, Lauren’s mother. She and I have had several discussions about the sermon, beginning the night of the auction. It was she who saw the bumper sticker, playing off the “Got Milk?” ad campaign, that said, “Got Hope?” and picked that as the sermon title.

          What if the answer is, No?

          I will share the definition I found on line: “Hope is the emotional state, the opposite of which is despair, which promotes the belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life. It is the ‘feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best….’”

          There are times we may not have any, for a variety of reasons.

          There is a continuum among us when it comes to suffering, loss, and having or finding hope. There are copies of a book of my early Wayland sermons called Perspectives that you will find here and there and can have for the taking. In it is a sermon called, “The Devil of the Noonday Sun,” which is a monastic phrase for acedia, spiritual torpor, a feeling of pointlessness and disinterest in life.

          In it I say, “insofar as your sense of pointless drift and torpor grows from weariness of body and soul – take a rest…. And if your sense of drift and boredom grows out of laziness, … remember that a life of the spirit zesty enough to enliven your days is something that has to be fed and tended, worked on, stuck to.

            “So to the indolent, I wish you energy and discipline; and to the driven, I wish you serenity and renewal.

          “And for the rest of us,… know that the world is still tantalizing, as it was before and will be again. Wait it out, keep breathing, be faithful in small ways. The juices will flow again. Hang in there and try to stay open to newness as it awakens in you afresh: a new book, new interests, new loves, new caring, and yet again, the demon’s demise, new energy, new joy.”

          So at one end of the spectrum are any of us when life goes flat and maybe all you need is a pep talk from the minister. But in my sermon in October I moved on to acknowledge yet again that “suffering is universal [and] for everyone, life is sometimes hard, really very hard,” yet there a few “things that are also universal, and comforting, sustaining, restorative, and precious: those things that tend toward the healing of the hurting heart and [of] the anguished mind….”

          And this was before the latest CD from the writer/singer Leonard Cohen, the voice of anguish and hope on the edge of despair, in his song, “Come Healing,” which begins, “O gather up the brokenness” and includes the lines,

 

          Behold the gates of mercy

          In arbitrary space

          And none of us deserving

          The cruelty or the grace….

          Come healing of the body

          Come healing of the mind.

 

          My list of healing forces included minor, harmless diversions and indulgences; business obligations and everyday chores; communities in which we live, like ours here; family and friends; others (the casual acquaintance, the random co-worker, even the passing stranger, who offers some word of encouragement, advise, or kindness that somehow lifts the sinking soul); counselors, therapists, clergy, and other trained professionals; activity, some re-engagement with what gives us special pleasure; religious or semi-religious practices; reading; and then six powers of the human spirit: the talent for finding humor and irony in the face of disaster; will power; powers of faith; reason; courage; and the buoyancy of the human spirit.

          For most of us, most of the time, some combination of these things succeeds in nurturing and, when needed, restoring our spirits. Sometimes not. Sometimes it is a matter of chemical imbalance and medicine can help lift the fog. I left off the list this time, one possible cure I know I have included in the past: getting out of town, to surround yourself with people who seem to have worries of their own. I hope all of you have learned by now the ones that usually work for you in times of distress or loss or ordeal, and you avail yourself of them.

          But some events are more awful than others, and some of your lives have been touched with tragedy – and “touched” hardly seems the right word. Impacted? Crushed? But no, you were not crushed. Here you are still, some of you with losses that live with you every day, lost ones who live with you every day. It is a basic part of who you are – you, a person missing someone else, or more than one someone else — a person living with the fact that one deep and precious desire will never be realized. The dead do not return.

          Donald Hall, the poet, wrote a book of poems about the illness and death of his wife Jane Kenyon, also a poet, and another about his grieving her death. In the latter he has a poem called, “Distressed Haiku,” set in April. It ends with the line, “and the dead return,” but that follows the lines

 

The Boston Red Sox win

a hundred straight games.

The mouse rips

the throat of the lion.”

 

          These are things that do not happen. Just before that, in the same poem, he has said the hardest of truths,

 

You think that their

dying is the worst

thing that could happen.

 

Then they stay dead.      

 

          Can one ever after be hopeful about the life that lies ahead?  

          I have not just been thinking and reading about this sermon since Mary bought it, but talking to others, including some of you. I realized that “Got Hope?” means different things to different people, even to the same person at different times.

          A non-member of the congregation assumed the question was, what hope was there for Lauren; she thought the answer might lie in reincarnation. I am not one to presume I know the answer to what happens after we die, although I do presume to know that no one knows or ever will.  One can hope whatever one wants about that.      

          One mother I talked with who had written about her own experience of losing a grown child to murder, a UU minister, conceived of the hope as that of forgiveness of the killer, which she still had not managed, although she had succeeded in getting the DA to plea bargain down to life in prison in a state with the death penalty.

          And then there have been the efforts of Lauren’s father Malcolm to create the hope that the disaster of Lauren’s death might serve to address critical issues of teenage relationships, dating, and abuse. Mary will also soon take a part in that effort, and both are committed through the Lauren Dunne Astley Fund to that effort, and to support for the kinds of engagement with social justice that Lauren embodied, as in her trips with other First Parishioners to help rebuild New Orleans.         

          One mother among us of a child who died, also told me that it helped, once she was ready, to start getting outside herself to help others, to make herself useful, first with close friends, then in larger and larger circles. 

          But that came later, after a time, and for many people it can be a pretty long time. Everyone’s grieving is different. She says, start slow, with small steps.

          And before that, at the long outset of living with the terrible absence? How can one have hope for the future after so great a loss?

          As Earl Grollman describes the situation in Living When a Loved One Has Died, “You have lost interest not only in yourself and those around you, but in life itself. You are empty, so is the world around you. This … is not weakness. It is a psychological necessity. It is one of the slow winding avenues of sorrow and loss. It is part of the mournful work of saying ‘Good-by’ to your beloved.” [44-45]

          The best answer I came upon was offered by our intern, Kevin Tarsa, who had heard it in a class with Dr. John Schneider. Every person I have talked to since who has been involved with awful situations like that faced by Mary and Malcolm has agreed. It is this:

          There are times – thank goodness, very, very uncommon times – but times when having hope is more than a person should expect of themselves, times just to get through, step by step, breath by breath, when hope is something people around you, your family and friends, hold for you until you are ready to receive it back.                

          In his book, Finding My Way: From Trauma to Transformation: The Journey Through Loss and Grief, Schneider writes, “hope may not be found internally – it may need to come from the outside. Others can hold hope while the grieving person explores hopelessness, loneliness and a lack of meaning and purpose, as it once existed.” [201] 

          “It’s a sacred trust to hold hope for grieving persons and families in difficult times. This trust may not require words, just intention and presence. It is often more important not to say that we believe that better days are ahead or that things will turn out for the best when others can’t feel that – and indeed, it may not be true.” [362]

          For the grieving and for those who care for them, it can be a tricky balance, giving and accepting that love and care — not always, and not too much, nor too little — changing day to day, hour to hour. But everyone knows that, and that it will not always be just right and that that is okay, that is just fine. Love and care keep trying, and forgiving when necessary, either way, and trying again. Because that hope we are holding for you, the hope you may not be able to have now or for a while, that hope we are holding for you, will not go away.

          In the weeks I have had this sermon in mind, I have collected readings I thought might fit, as usual. I printed one out, put it in the appropriate pile, and have it now to use – but I neglected to wrote down who wrote it, and searches in my computers’ histories have been fruitless. Maybe one of you wrote it; please accept my apologies if so. 

          “In my suffering I have been shown kindness.  I have been held by this love in action, and I have been consoled. Kindness explains nothing about why there is suffering, but it helps alleviate it nonetheless.  I cannot stress enough how much kindness can do for our loved ones. Kind actions, kind words.  They are deeply powerful and enduring.

          “Kindness and mercy and water and walks help us.  Kindness and mercy heal us.  Kindness and mercy guide us to put one foot in front of the other and walk forward.  It may be scary to know that there is no reason for why some things happen.  It may be terrifying to feel totally out of control.  

          “But there are things we can do for each other to lessen the fear and the dread.  We can accompany one another in silence and tenderness.  We can let our beloved cry until they can cry no more and then we can dry their tears and simply be with them.  We can assure them that when they are weary, feeling small, we’re on their side. 

          “Our witness and presence are enough” – or at least, it may be the best we can do, along with practical support, rides and meals and whatever else is called for.

          I like thinking that a religious community like ours is a place where kindness and kindnesses can do their healing work. My colleague Barbara Wells Ten Hove recently wrote that “we are called to transform the painful and harsh realities of our lives into as much beauty as we can. We are called to create mosaics known as community, as family, as congregations. And we are invited to bring our broken selves into relationship, and find ways to help each other heal.” [Quest, 3/12, 3]

          It can just be being together, in caring support. Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno is a Pennsylvania poet whose 21-year-old daughter was murdered. Her collection of poems about her daughter and the murder and its aftermath is called, Slamming Open the Door. One is titled, “The Unitarian Society of Germantown,” the congregation to which she belongs.

 

The church is a big wooden boat,

Dave and I in a corner,

As the rain drops patter

Then slash

Through the dark outside.

 

Hold on tight,

says the kindly moon face

of the minister.

 

But we can smell our own sweat.

We roll our eyes and moan

and grapple for position.

 

One by one, the others

press their bodies against us,

until finally,

we tire and lean in

to their patient animal breath,

to wait it out together.

 

          It is a slow process. I wish that were not so, but everyone I hear from or read says, it can take a long time. “At the beginning it is just terrible,” I read, “and then it gets worse.”

          But then it gets better, not as well as before, as one would wish, but livable, even enjoyable, much of the time, if not ever without the longing of loss. A UU colleague of mine [the Rev. Cathy Harrington] wrote, “My life changed forever the night I received the call that my beautiful daughter and her roommate had been brutally murdered…. A shroud of darkness fell over me in heavy layers suffocating me with fear and despair….  I was thrust on a journey through hell seemingly without end….”

          But in time a glimmer of hope for the future shone through, if only a glimmer. She wrote that a retired astronomer, Dr. Ed Dennison, when she mentioned to him that a counsellor had poked a tiny hole in her darkness, said, “’Have you ever heard of a pinhole camera?’ … He demonstrated it to me by covering the window in his laundry room with foil and poking a tiny hole in the foil. We huddled in the darkness and waited.

          “Impatiently, I squirmed in the dark, stuffy room as my eyes slowly adjusted.  I thought five minutes was surely enough, but Dr. Dennison told us that it takes a full thirty minutes for our eyes to adjust to the dark. After ten minutes, he held up a white paper to the beam of light coming in through the tiny hole and we were astounded to see the trees from outside outlined on the paper.   Gradually, we could see the details of the leaves and as we waited they became more intricate and clear. 

          “I was amazed at how I was sure that I could see clearly in a few minutes and how much more clarity there was in fifteen, and even more in twenty and twenty-five minutes. The trees were upside down, and though I haven’t found a metaphor to properly explain that phenomenon, I had no problem understanding the metaphor of the pinhole camera and my journey … parting my sea of despair and hopelessness one step at a time.  I may never arrive, but it is the goal … that I have set my compass.”

          When and if things ever get as bad as that, please, while you wait to be ready to start parting that sea, be good to yourself, and afterwards, too. It is okay if you sometimes even feel good.

          And it is okay when you don’t. Schneider thinks that “mourning the loss of hope is a spiritually necessary part of grieving.” [120] But he also notes that “eventually the time comes when grief no longer feels like a crushing burden.” [119] Eventually hope will return. 

          For anyone low on hope, or out of it for now, my own hope for you is that you will get to the place that D. H. Lawrence describes in the course of his poem, “Shadows”:

 

And if, in the changing phases of a [person’s] life

I fall in sickness and in misery

my wrists seem broken and my heart seems dead

and my strength is gone, and my life

is only the leavings of a life:

 

And still, among it all, snatches of lovely

oblivion, and snatches of renewal

odd wintry flowers upon the withered stem,

yet new, strange flowers

such as my life has not brought forth before,

new blossoms of me.