Broken Open:
Facing the Tragic Together

This is your sermon this morning, not mine. I mean that literally. What I'm about to share are four sets of words from a number of you as you've struggled to make sense of the horrific thing that has happened this week.

I also consider this sermon a thank you--as these four represent many other words and actions that have gifted me with a new definition of church and reminded me once again of why this peculiar thing we call religious community is so very precious.

Gift #1
It came to me in email form after the vigil we held on Wednesday night to honor Christine.

"Dear Scott, Kaaren and Jen,
As I sat last night at the vigil my final thoughts were, "What can I do to make the world a better place?" This was more than the male thing of wanting to fix things when there not right, but a real desire to do, or to lead by example, to make this world better. I hate for our children to hear this sort of news-leading them to be so unsure of what the world holds in store for them. I didn't know Christine or Tim but all I have heard didn't point toward this. Even though (darkness and light) seem to be present in all, how can we not still question how something like this happens.

"As an artist, my thoughts were naturally toward a sculpture but nothing profound enough has come to me yet. Nevertheless, I left with the resolve that somehow I was going to make this world better. We as artists, in all forms, some with larger audiences than others, somehow have an obligation to this. Hope and Love exist, it's our job to present them to the world. As others have said, this is "an essential function of genuine beauty"--"it gives human beings a healthy 'shock.' It is needed to draw them out of themselves, wrench them away from resignation...to an understanding of the impact we can have on the world."

Not long after receiving this email, I came across a poem written by a colleague. One of the lines caught me off guard. It read: "I believe that when the web of life trembles in one spot, hope and love resonate throughout!"

I'm embarrassed to say it, but I don't think that line would have made sense to me if it wasn't for my friend's email. So often when the web around me rips or trembles, it is doubt that ripples through me-even anger. In those moments, it's easy to feel abandoned by life. And yet here is my friend testifying to the experience of being called by it.

Make no mistake: that sense of partnership with life doesn't happen automatically outside of a community of meaning such as ours. What's that old Christian scripture? "I speak only to those who have ears to hear..." Speaking only for myself, I know that I lose my ability to listen and forget my identity as a mender of the web when I spend too much time in the culture out there-a culture that trains us to listen and look out for the lesser things, like bargains on stuff and what's in it for us. Along these lines, I can't help but think this morning-as I'm sure a number of you will too-about a slide presentation once given by Christine in which she was showing her photographs of the local wetlands as she read that famous reading by Chief Seattle. The one that declares, "What we do to the web we do to ourselves."

It's no small thing to remind each other that we are a large part of what gives the web the power to repair itself. It's no small thing to feel that together we have the power to make "healthy shocks" happen to counter the devastating ones.

Gift #2
This one came in the form of a surprise visit while I was working in my office at church.

"I need you to know," she said,"that yesterday, I planned to come in here today to complain. I was furious actually. You know don't you, Scott, that members are starting to speculate about Tim. I know him. They don't.

"I was there when a few of them we're debating whether or not we should reach out to or even mention concern for him. How could that happen here?! I'm really scared people will begin treating him like some kind of monster.

"I talked to another friend of mine about it. She's got domestic violence in her past. She said she's also wrestling with a lot of conflicted feelings. We've got to let each other sort this out in our own ways, she said. We all bring not only different opinions but different experiences of pain to this. I'm not taking sides, she said. But I think we've all just got to work to be extra kind with each other right now."

My visitor didn't say much after that. She simply said that she was committed to trying not to be so angry and that she hoped people would also be kind to her too.

Right after that I went to my shelf and pulled off a meditation manual written by our minister emeritus, Rev. Dick Gilbert. I found and Xeroxed the meditation that her comment had brought to mind. Here it is. I'm told that of all Dick's writings, this poem is by far the one that people remember most from his 32 year ministry here.

It's called Gentleness in Living.
Be gentle with one another -
It is a cry from the lives of people battered
By thoughtless words and brutal deeds;
It comes from the lips of those who speak them,
And the lives of those who do them.

Who of us can look inside another and know what is there
Of hope and hurt, or promise and pain?
Who can know from what far places each has come
Or to what far places each may hope to go?

Our lives are like fragile eggs.
They crack and the substance escapes.
So handle with care!
Handle with exceedingly tender care
For there are human beings within,
Human beings as vulnerable as we are,
Who feel as we feel,
Who hurt as we hurt.

Life is too transient to be cruel with one another;
It is too short for thoughtlessness,
Too brief for hurting.
Life is long enough for caring,
It is lasting enough for sharing,
Precious enough for love.
Be gentle with one another.

My entire sermon today could easily have been all about this--that is, if I hadn't seen so many of you already living it this past week.

And you all know--don't you?--that we've got to keep living it in the coming days, relentlessly. The complexities of coming to terms with this murder will tear us apart otherwise. We know that don't we?

For there are over 1000 people who are part of this church--each with very different and often conflicted reactions to what's happened. Which means we're inevitably going to run into thoughts and feelings that, not only differ from, but also offend our own. If we lose the ability to take a breath and put ourselves in each other's shoes, or at least, take a breath and give each other the space we need to sort this out in our individual ways, then we will not only betray our highest ideals, but much of what we've created here together could be lost.

It's important to say this out loud. Christine and Tim were active members here for over 20 years. In the last two, they choose to leave because its vision no longer matched their own. This means many things. It means many of us treasured them as friends and many of us never knew them at all. It means the pain of this tragedy for some will be directly about Christine and Tim, while for others the pain will mostly be about triggering previous trauma that is only indirectly connected to them. Some of us will struggle with how this could have emerged from a couple like them. Others will struggle with what this says about the dependability of life itself. Some of us will need to talk and mourn for months. Others are carrying entirely different personal struggles and hopes and will need this to not take up too much room.

The only power and process that can contain and negotiate all that is the relentless kindness that walked into and out of my office the other day.

Gift #3
"Tim is one of us"

I heard these words from the mouths of more of you than I can count. I heard it in the choir room. I heard it from the church leadership. I heard it from the staff. I heard it before and after the vigil for Christine.

"Whatever evil drove him to do this, leaving him isolated will do no good."

This too I've heard over and over from all of you. And it humbles me.

No confusion about excusing the evil he's done. No naivety about how carefully such reaching out needs to be thought through. Just a courageous attempt to witness to the fact that the easy route of hate and denial of his humanity is not what we are called to do.

Gift #4
The last one...for now. These words weren't spoken. They were sung.

After the vigil Wednesday night, Jen and I--on behalf of the entire staff--went to be with the late service choir--of which both Christine and Tim were a part for many years. The simple intent was to tell the choir that the ministers and all of us are here for them. Our time together was important but brief.

And then they stayed and sang; they practiced so that today they could be here for all of us.

I drove home feeling like they understood something that I simply hadn't yet: that the most important thing we can do in response to this tragedy-to any tragedy--is to keep being the church.

Friends, too often, I think, we take this thing we do for granted--as if church is some kind of hobby or simple extra enrichment to our lives--an add-on which we could possibly do without.

We Unitarian Universalists resist stating it openly and clearly for reasons I've never fully understood, but the church-this church-exists for the sake of healing--and each of us most surely needs healing, not just at times like these, but week in and week out.

We prefer more comfortable words like enrichment and development, inspiration and celebration, but when we are brave enough to be vulnerable, we admit-at least to ourselves-that we count on and trust this place to be here for our pain. And again, even though most of us sneak around such sentimental language, I know all of us take that seriously.

We all know what it's like to have our hearts broken by such things as divorce or disillusionment, death of a spouse or the news of disease, loneliness or betrayal, impoverishment or bigotry, cruel injustice or even inexplicable violence. We know what it's like to have our hearts broken and none of wants the rest to have to go through that alone.

Which leads me to that new definition of the church which all of you have taught me this week.

It's implicit in all four of the lived sermons I lifted up today.

From using mourning as a call to mend the web, to containing your pain in order to give others the space and kindness they need, to facing evil and offering compassion anyway, to honoring your broken hearts by offering others the healing that comes through song, you have taught me that our work as a church-our most precious work as a church--is transforming broken hearts into hearts broken wide.

Transforming broken hearts in to hearts broken wide.

And since I could never come up with such a catchy phrase like that on my own, let me give credit where credit is do.

It comes from another poem written by a UU* in response to a similar congregational tragedy as ours.

In times of grief
We have but two choices
Our hearts can break
Or
They can break wide open
The broken heart falls
Clutching and desperate
Into a deep chasm of loneliness
The heart broken open
Joins with the pain
Of a million other hearts
And knows
Finally
That it is never alone
May we choose
The communion of broken hearts
Over isolation
And with that choosing
May we act together in love
Toward the healing
Of the Heart
of this world.

May it be so. Amen.

* The author of this poem/prayer is Barbara Ford of the UU congregation in Portland, Oregon.

Scott Tayler, Parish Co-Minister
December 6, 2009