To Love the World Again
"Anyone can slay a dragon, but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again."
In her opening words last week, Jen shared this quote that hangs on her office wall. She set it along side the story of her grandfather, who went to fight in World War II, was immediately captured and sent to prison camps. He never got to slay the German dragon he went to conquer, but instead was handed a different epic battle - that of having to get up every morning and love life again, even after it allowed him to see and suffer horror.
Our reading this morning speaks of getting a diagnosis. If I asked, every one of us here could add another one - at least one - to the list. We've talked a lot in the past two weeks about the social justice and global dragons that need defeating, but we must remember also - right? - that many of us have our hands full with much more personal battles closer to home, deep in our hearts. It's just not that easy to rebel against the instinct within to stop trusting life.
This week, someone said to me that they didn't agree with the quote on Jen's wall. "It's just not true that anyone can slay a dragon," they said. "Oh, but you know," said another standing with us, "you can always convince yourself slaying dragons is worth the try." She went on: "Conquering bad guys seems like something I can always be stirred up to do. But conquering my doubts is an entirely other thing. When I'm really doubting life, forget about convincing me otherwise."
My friend is spot on. Loss, betrayal, disappointments, failed dreams, deep wounds - they leave us with lots of doubts. We start wondering if life is really trustworthy. And once you lose your trust and love for life, it is, indeed, not at all easy to get it back. And so today, three stories about people who had a hard time getting it back, but ultimately did. My hope is that their acts of getting up and loving the world all over again, make it just a bit easier for us to do the same.
The first is the story of Reverend Doctor Forrester Church - one of the most respected, well-known and beloved Unitarian Universalist ministers in our movement. He has served what is arguably the most prominent UU church in the country - All Souls in New York City - for three decades. He's the author of twenty-three books. National politicians, world leaders, leading business people from our country's major companies all come to hear him speak. As well as hundreds of us ordinary folks too. He is only 58. So it seemed we'd hear him speak for many more years to come.
But last fall, his doctors discovered and diagnosed what turned out to be a particularly fierce form of esophageal cancer. He was given six months to live. He got on the internet to see if his doctors really knew what they were talking about. He cautions that for all of us hoping that the internet holds wisdom our doctors don't, forget it - the internet for him just confirmed their prognosis, but with mind-numbing detail. So he accepted the end. Resigned his pulpit and prepared to say good bye.
Then, suddenly and surprisingly, everything changed, as if in the movies. The aggressive cancer that "always" grows and metastasizes, simply didn't. Over night, his odds of survival leapt from 20-1 to 50-50. Then a talented surgeon removed his esophagus, replacing it, conveniently, with his stomach. (Forest now jokes that he has an "estomagus.") Further tests revealed, again remarkably, that no cancer is present. While it could always come back, the odds are incredibly low. His doctors pronounced him cured. In other words, he beat it. He won.
But here's the thing: he didn't feel like a winner.
Late last winter, standing again in his pulpit, he used his first sermon back to explain this odd feeling. He said instead of feeling like a winner, he found himself thinking back to his childhood, to a bet he made on Silky Sullivan.
He was nine and it was the first horse race his parents ever took him to. A pretty good first one if you ask me - it is was the 1958 Kentucky Derby! He had five dollars in his pocket, given to him by his father to bet as he saw fit. There was never a moment of question: All of it would go to Silky Sullivan. How could it not? Silky had the magic. He had wowed Californian crowds all year. Slow and relaxed out of gate. In the middle of the pack around the first turn and then at the back of the pack by the middle of the race. But then around the third turn, a mysterious switch was flipped. Affirming all who believe in the ability to come from behind, Silky would suddenly emerge from the mass, using the third turn to pass one horse after another, until neck and neck with the leader, and at the last minute: winner by a nose!
Over and over again, Silky did it. All year. Until that day at the Derby. You see Silky was a western phenomenon, but the Kentucky derby is not a western track. All those huge, powerful horses of the east were there now. Again Silky made his move around the third turn and pulled up to 4th, 3rd and then 2nd. But with only a couple dozen yards to go, three other horses blew by him. With four horses in front of him, Silky was a loser. And thus so was young Forest.
So why this story of young loss, when the man, Forester Church had just won?
Well, because on that day at the track, young Forest didn't feel like a loser, even though he technically lost. Silky didn't give him a return on his bet, but Silky did - Forester says - give his heart an amazing rush. It didn't matter that Silky didn't win, it was enough that he simply added drama and meaning to the race.
And so you see, explains Church, on that day, Silky taught him that he had a choice - he could love winning or he could love the race! And put into those terms the choice seemed easy. To love winning, he learned, made joy and gratitude long shots, always hanging in the balance and dependant on the outcome. Whereas, loving the race itself, made joy and gratitude present no matter what. And so, at 58, because of Silky Sullivan, Forester Church, the man, found himself able to love life whether the cancer was here to stay, or gone, or coming back. That's why he didn't suddenly feel like a winner when he beat the cancer; he'd never felt like he lost.
These aren't his exact words, but this is what Forest's story and life say to me: "It doesn't really matter if I win or lose - get banged up, never pull away from the pack or even have to end my career early - it seems to me that it's a great gift just to be able to run the race."
"Anyone can slay a dragon, but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again." I'm jealous of Forest; he learned something early on that many of us are still struggling to get into our big fat heads.
I want to win. I want to get the girl. I want to be at front of the pack. I want everyone to agree with me. I want the big office with all the windows. When I retire I want the big gold watch. I want that fairytale marriage that begins as college sweethearts and lasts until the birth of our great-great grand-child. I want the tests to come back surprisingly negative. I want to get through it all with only minor scars. I want my child to bury me, not me to bury her. I don't want to fight and keep going back to court over the kids. I don't want to have to endure dad living with me, but not being able to remember my name.
I don't want to lose. I want to win.
None of us want to lose. All of us, we want to win.
It's just not that easy to love the race as a whole, regardless of the outcome, especially when that outcome involves us standing empty-handed, having lost the prize. And I don't think Dr, Church would disagree. I don't think he'd say it's easy - as I'm sure it wasn't easy for him - but what I do think he'd say is: WE CAN! Not that we should, or we must, but simply a reminder and an affirmation that we can!
And there's no minimizing the importance of this message. So much of what makes it hard to get up in the morning and love life again is that we simply forget that it's an option. We live in a society, where the best selling books and hottest new age spiritual guidance is all about the secret of getting exactly what we want. Ours is, as they say, a "winner-takes-all" culture. "America is #1"; so if you are a "true American" that's what you'll aspire to as well. Our politics and our popular religion all preach the doctrine of "exceptionalism." God, we say, has singled us out for great things and will protect us from the bad. Our malls, the sacred temples of our time, are filled with the affirmation that "You deserve the best." With this as the water in which we swim, how can we not identify life with winning and getting exactly what we want? It's just very tough to remember that another option, another spiritual task even exists.
I have a Christian colleague, a dear friend, who just goes nuts when I talk about our Unitarian philosophy of worship. I tell him we gather every Sunday to "celebrate life." He always responds, "Celebrate what exactly about life?!" "That's not a religion," he says, "That's not a philosophy. That's not even having a point!" He insists, "Scott, you've got to celebrate something! Life in general is just too big. What's your particular thing?! I mean we've got Christ's triumph over sin and death. The Buddhists have nirvana and the ability to detach. Jews have Tikkun and the sacred task given to them by God to repair the world. You Unitarians have to pick something. Otherwise you're nothing. No one really has a reason to come to you for help."
I'm usually able to muddle through and give a decent response. At least one that feels decent to me. But today, I'm feeling that I now have one that's better than decent. Thanks to that quote on Jen's wall and to Jen for sharing it, I've got - we've got - an answer that's great: We gather to help each other love the world all over again! We gather to remind each other that it's possible to love the world all over again. We gather to remind each other, it's what we humans do!
And yes, I mean that in general. With all due respect to my friend, the world has enough preachers out there telling people there's only one way, only one "true reason" to love life. What we need are preachers out there - and communities of passionate people out there - telling people that any of those ways will do! If it makes you fall in love with life again - not at the expense of others - then it's the best possible reason you can find.
And maybe without realizing it, that's our most rebellious belief: That there is no one right way, only one right way for you, or maybe - better yet - a bunch of right ways for all of us! "Healing stories" is what the author Matthew Sanford calls them - the stories we tell ourselves to reconnect ourselves to life. And what makes Sanford such a powerful writer - as what makes us such a powerful religion - is that Sanford is deadly serious about us needing all the healing stories we can get. And so now story number two:
When Matthew Sanford was 13 years old, he lay asleep in the back of his family's car, all of them headed to his aunt's house for Thanksgiving. It was a very cold and wet fall day, 31 degrees and misting. They were coming up on a bridge and hit what we all know around here as black ice. They slid off the embankment, tumbled front to back three times before they hit the bottom. His dad and sister were dead. His mom and brother only bruised. And he, he was left severely broken - his back, his neck, his wrists. He never walked again. His lungs filled with fluid and an injury to his pancreas left it unclear if he would live. When he woke up in the hospital, his mom and brother explained what happened, that his dad and sister were gone, that he was badly hurt and very sick.
And here's the thing: Sandford says he recognized right away that his mother and brother were desperate for him to live. He writes, "So that became my healing story. I was in such pain and so devastated that I personally didn't want to live. But they needed me to. So that became my way to attach to something living. From then on, for a very long time, through a lot of hard times, I told myself I needed to live for them. They lost too much to lose me too."
As his story continues, Sanford tracks a number of healing stories that he built for himself and used to stay connected to life. There came a time when "living for them" was not enough. So he found his way into the "hero's story" - one of our culture's most compelling and most used. It involved the drama of "beating the odds," "mind over body" and "conquering the disease." In other words, it was the drama of a fight, quite akin to the well-known fight that the late Christopher Reeve - Superman - displayed in his own battle with being paralyzed. And for many years it worked for Sanford. It got him out of bed and into life - even if that meant "into the gym" most of the time. He proudly explains that biceps as big as people's necks, was his prize.
But then one day he pushed his body so hard that it broke again. An arm. A leg. This lead to his most recent healing story - that of, not making battle with his broken body, but making friends with it. He's now a yoga instructor for people with significant physical disabilities. He's moved from the story of overcoming a body that failed him, to the story of being grateful for a body that has withstood a great deal of trauma for him. "I'm no longer angry with my body. I'm grateful for it," he says. "I am awed by how much it has absorbed and how it has, for me, continued to move towards living. I've learned that my paralyzed body didn't stop talking to me. It just changed its voice. It went to a more subtle whisper that doesn't have as much clarity. It's quieter now, but also sweeter."
"I've learned that my paralyzed body didn't stop talking to me. It just changed its voice."
That line, of all those I've wrestle with this week, is - to me - the most precious. Simply put, it reminds me that it's not all on us. It tells me that when we do wake up and find it hard to love the world again, when we find ourselves without a healing story that works, then life is there ready and willing to meet us part way. It's not just our bodies that alter their voices when tragedy and troubles strike; Life does it too. It also alters the way it speaks and reaches out to us. It never really stops. We've got to remember that and rebel against the fearful voice inside our head that is telling us otherwise. So much of loving the world again, friends, is just a matter of being willing to listen and look, anew.
And so my third and final story. This one short. About a writer and Gaelic scholar, named Brian Doyle, who has a son who has a hole in his heart, and could live with it the rest of his life or die because of it any day. This makes it hard for Doyle, he confesses, to affirm and say yes to the goodness of life. Gaelic he points out has no equivalent of the word "yes." It only has the word "sea," which means "it is." That makes Gaelic the most honest of languages, he says, because it captures the way, on our own, it is often very difficult to utter an unqualified "yes" to life. And yet, there are moments, he admits, when he stops trying so hard and instead just listens and looks, that the "yes" comes as a gift.
He writes, "When, all alone, I talk myself into fearing and cursing the ability of disease and accident to so easily take my children, it is then that I make myself trudge upstairs and sit in the midst of them, holding my daughter in my lap, and rubbing my old chapped hands across the thin sharp blades of her shoulders. And I wait patiently for one of my two sons to belch like a river barge, for Joe to happily blow bubbles of spit in his crib simply because he can or Liam to suddenly say "Ho!" for no reason other than the Liamly joy at the sound of his own voice.
And it is then, that I find myself most easily saying yes. to them, yes, yes, yes, and to exhaustion, I say yes, and to the puzzling wonder of my wife's love, I say O yes, and to horror and fear and joy, I say yes, to rich cheerful chaos that leads me sooner to the grave and happier along the muddy grave road, I say yes, and to my absolute surprise and with unbidden tears, I say yes, yes, yes to it all."
September 30, 2007