It's a hard story - this story of the two trade tower victims holding hands. Beautiful in its own way, but also devastating. However as we talk today, and all this month, about being helpless I can't think of a better story to guide us, because it's a story that - above all - reminds us that no matter what we face, no matter what we've lost, being completely helpless is something we never really are.
I shared this story with a colleague recently and she said, "It's amazing how much we need each other. What a beautiful image of acceptance and two people reaching for help as they approach the end."
I didn't say it out loud - because of course there is no one right interpretation of this story - but I see a different story. In my imagination, I don't see two people reaching out to get help; I see two people in the last minutes of their life, reaching out to give it. For me, this is a story not so much of "helplessness accepted" as "helplessness transcended." In the flash of a terrible instant, the lives of these two people are reduced to a sliver, hemmed in on all sides by death and destruction, helpless to escape, hope non-existent, all desired options removed, and yet, what do they do? They find a way to go on. That's what I think we are looking at in this story: two human beings who find a way - to borrow from the other poem Kaaren read earlier - "to make music with what remains."
And this morning, friends, what amazes me most is how often and how dependably we do the same. That's why I share this story - not as a tale of two unique people with extraordinary strength, but as a reminder of the extraordinary strength we all possess.
Ministers have the privilege of receiving this reminder all the time. Earlier this fall, a new member was talking to Kaaren about the challenges of being a minister. "Your job forces you to see so much pain and loss," he said, "You have to witness and indirectly absorb so much tragedy. It must be hard." "Yes and no," Kaaren replied. "It depends how you look at it. Truth is it's never just tragedy we see; almost always it's a matter of being blown away by the many ways people find to survive."
A dad special orders and routinely wears a t-shirt that reads "Parkinson's Sucks." His way of using anger to marshal the little energy he has and crowd out the feelings of hopelessness that constantly keep trying to creep in and take over. "Without the anger, I'd call it quits," he says, "so for now, it's my friend."
A Sunday school teacher who lost her son comes back to life by giving herself a new "job": "I get out of bed these days by telling myself it's my job now to make the most of all that comes my way and the least of all that goes."
A professional violinist's career is ended by nerve damage in her shoulder. After three months of barely leaving her house or communicating with friends, the first phone call she makes is to the choir director who she tells, "I think it's time for me to try singing on for size."
A group of church members with cancer discover they also share a love for writing and start treating themselves not just with chemotherapy but with a book project to raise money for a cure.
And a mother whose teenage daughter blames her and rages at her for the fact that dad left finds a way to say "I'd prefer to be connected through love, but if wanting to tell me she hates me is what keeps her walking into my room, I'll take that for now over no bond or connection at all."
The list could go on and on. Indeed, it does go on and on, and that's the point. After the "final no's" of our lives, we find a way to say yes. It's not that helplessness is rare. Or that starting over is easy. It has more to do with the fact that helplessness is just not a state in which we human beings easily remain. We can try to stay there, and heaven knows, out of self-pity or bitterness or laziness or even exhaustion, all of us at one time or another try our best to stay stuck. But the wild and wonderful trick is that we can't, even when a part of us, or even a big part of us, wants to remain in the world of helplessness, we simply can't. It's just not how we are built.
A few weeks ago, Kaaren and I took our regular trip to the national storytelling festival in Jonesbough, Tennessee. As always, all of the storytellers were strong; It's a gathering of the best of the best. But this year, one teller stood out: Kevin Kling. His specialty is survival stories. They are wonderful in their own right, but what lends them an extra, incalculable weight is that they are delivered through a body that has survived more than any of us would hope to bear. You see, Kling was born with a rare hormonal imbalance that left his body significantly smaller and more fragile than average and with an arm and hand that are not fully developed. On top of that, a few years ago he was in a motorcycle accident that shattered dozens of bones, scarred his entire body, significantly reduced the use of his legs, and severed all the nerves in his shoulder, rendering his one good arm lifeless. It took him a year to learn to walk and talk again. He is still learning how to compensate for the loss of the use of his arm.
In one of his stories, he explained that this inability to use his arms and fingers made typing impossible. So he bought a voice activated computer. During one of his first attempts at using it, his dog and cat ran into the room and started to fight. Barking and hissing at each other. Row. Row. Meow. Meow. Meow. Row. Row. He then looked down at his computer screen which read, "How. How. Why. Why. Why. How. How."
Kling said that explained a lot to him about the relationship between cats and dogs.
But it explained even more about the relationship between human beings and their helplessness.
We need to remember he says that we are neither cats nor dogs - that the voice that rises up in us is neither a bark nor a meow, so to speak, but both. We are creatures who, in response to helplessness, don't just ask "Why did this happen?" but also "How do I go on?"
The problem is the "why?" voice gets most of the press, he says. And it's true. We have support groups, philosophy departments and churches galore devoted to asking "Why do bad things happen to good people?" We're littered with this or that school of psychology, all preoccupied with who has the best explanation for why we are so emotionally messed up and traumatized. And we hear over and over, starting right away from the time we are little, that what makes human - beings unique is our ability and tendency to ask "Why?" Indeed living in our culture is a virtual guarantee that you'll become an expert "Why Person."
Which is why somebody needs to start reminding us that we are "How People" too, says Kling; So people like him know to start listening for that "How Voice" right away, rather than stumbling upon it by accident, or missing it entirely because they aren't familiar with it's tune.
Kevin Kling doesn't say this, but if you ask me, a big part of helping us embody our ability to ask "How do I go on?" involves recognizing and honoring the fact that there is no one right way. Again, this isn't Kevin Kling's point, but another story he tells gets at this better than any story of my own.
As I said, after his motorcycle accident, it took Kling over a year to re-learn how to talk and walk. Most of that year was spent in the hospital along with many other patients struggling to rehabilitate themselves. Any of us who have gone through or had a loved one go through such intensive rehabilitation know it's a process that requires heroic stamina and commitment. The progress is painfully slow and the successes are marked only in very small achievements. In a month's time, "success" can involve building up your vocabulary from just 3 words to a dozen or moving from the ability to walk 10 feet on your own to 20 feet without help. It's easy to become hopeless and even easier to quit. Those who make it find some secret way to shut out the doubt and keep their eyes on the larger prize.
Mid-way through his own recovery, Kevin Kling met a middle-aged man named Steve. Steve had been there much longer than Kling and was now at the end of his journey. He was scheduled to leave that following week. Being in the middle of his fight, Kling's hope and endurance was faltering, so he turned to Steve for inspiration and advice. "What's your secret, man?" Kling asked, "How did you make it? How did you keep keeping on?" Kling was sure he could steal Steve's secret and ride it the rest of the way to a similar recovery.
Steve took a breath before answering. With his eyes focused intently on the glass exit doors of the hospital, Steve finally said, "There was no way I was staying in here, kid; They don't allow you to smoke inside."
Kling admits, it's not what he'd hoped to hear; but it was a learning none the less: Different Strokes for Different Folks. That's what it taught him. Everybody's way is going to be different, and we all need to be ok with that.
And I this morning, I'd only add that, in addition to being ok with it, we also need to celebrate and promote it as well. Because too often what keeps us stuck in helplessness is not that we lack the ability to move on, but that we are trying to move on in a way that just doesn't fit us. We're furious at life for taking our spouse, but told that the only hope for healing lies in moving as quickly as possible toward acceptance. We're avoiding that vodka bottle for the sake of our kids and yet we're told that real commitment involves doing it for nobody other than our self. We're back at work the very next day after our diagnosis, but told what we really need to do is stay home and stay clear of anything that allows us to retreat into denial. We are given books with eight fool-proof steps. We're told these are the exact five stages for which we need to prepare. But what we need most is the very thing we so rarely get: the simple message to trust ourselves and our own unique ways.
Friends, over and over, in as many ways as we can, we need to tell each other:
Forget about letting go, if holding on is what you need to do.
Forget about acceptance, if anger is where you need to be.
Bargain for a while if you must, and do it without any shame or guilt.
Trust your gut when it says denial has its place, and don't let anyone ever tell otherwise.
You shouldn't be happy or grateful, forgiving or at peace.
You shouldn't remember this or that.
All we need to remember is that there are no "shoulds" - except those our hurting and fearful heart says it has.
This is a reminder that none of us can do without. None of us can make it on our own. None of us can remember all that life requires us to remember. None of us can keep things in perspective all by ourselves. That's why we are here! To be a member of a religious community is nothing if not a confession that we easily forget what matters most and need each other to help us bring it back to mind.
And that is especially true when it comes to helplessness. When our worlds come crashing down, the memory of and faith in our power is the first thing to go. That's true for all of us, no matter how tough or smart or worldly or wise. Again, I don't think any of us is ever really helpless, but it sure is easy to feel like we are, isn't it. And a church that doesn't take that seriously is simply not doing its job.
This is something that the minister I followed at my previous church understood better than most. His name was Nick Cardell. I'm always amazed that when ministers retire they all seem able, and even eager, to say that their 20 or 30 or 40 years of preaching amounts to basically one thing. I'll never forget Nick's one thing. Like with our own Dick Gilbert who Kaaren and I followed here, Nick had served in the ministry basically as many years as I was old. And in Nick's final sermon, he said all those years of preaching could be boiled down into a simple story about a mistake.
It was a mistake he made when writing a sermon about our moral obligations as human beings. It was, up until that time, his favorite theme. But then a typo threw everything off. You see, he meant to type the word "responsibility" but his finger slipped and a space snuck in creating two words when Nick had intended only one. The computer did a quick automatic spell check and suddenly Nick found himself staring at a sentence that celebrated humanity's "RESPONSE ABILITY." Not "responsibility," but "RESPONSE ABILITY" - humanity's ability to respond.
Nick said, in that moment, a giant light when on for him. Suddenly it became clear that nothing else was more important. Suddenly it became clear that what human beings need most--and what the world needs most from human beings--is an awareness not so much of our obligations, as our abilities. Forget about guilting people with all they should do, he said. The real business of religion is reminding people of all they can do.
In the face of personal pain, we have the ability to respond.
In the face of overwhelming political messes, we have the ability to respond.
In the face of closed doors, we have the ability to respond.
Even in the face of a radically hemmed in or shortened life, we still have the ability to respond.
We are not small, insignificant or helpless, and we need to remember that with all our might. Nick said it all boiled down to that.
Not bad if you ask me.
Amen.
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