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Can You Bear It? “Each of
us needs to receive in order to grow up, but each of us needs to give something
away for the same reason.” Sermon Most
of you know that today is my first Sunday morning in the pulpit here in over
five months. Thank you again for the
precious gift of time that you gave to my family and me over the course of my
sabbatical. I know from the wonderful
Sunday service that was offered last week, a service during which people shared
what they had learned in my absence, a service that would have made any
minister beam with joy, just as I did…I know that you had a rich time of your
own. I am confident that the mental and
emotional space afforded me by this period of reflection, renewal and study
will continue to pay dividends for our church and for me and we head boldly
into our future together. Today,
I want to tell you a story that comes from that sabbatical. On
an early February afternoon, I was visiting with one of my spiritual mentors,
sharing my strange and wonderful, still-dawning sabbatical reality with
her. I remember telling her how extraordinary
it all seemed…that this congregation would entrust this adventure to me, and
how it didn’t seem fair that everyone doesn’t get this kind of
intentional opportunity for reflection and renewal. Then, as was the custom of our meetings, I
reported on the current state of my life. Susan, Leah and I were healthy. All of our needs were being met. Sure, we still owned two houses, and were
paying two mortgages and money was getting tight, but a few weeks
earlier we had accepted a contingent offer and the promise of a sale seemed
imminent at last. Sure we were in the
midst of a brutally snowy winter, but it would surely come to an end at some
point. Sure I was getting sucked into the passion and punditry of an ongoing presidential
primary that, I’ll admit, was becoming a kind of dangerous obsession for
me. But could I be blamed for being
passionate about the choosing of our future president? Susan had taken
advantage of this time to go back to school and to enrich her life, a life that
by circumstance, if not necessity, often has to take a back seat to mine. We both had more space in our lives than
usual to regularly exercise. I was spending lots of time with my daughter,
enjoying her precious four-year old personality, and I was busy reading books
and preparing for travel that promised to offer just the right amount of
learning and leisure. “Everything seems
to be lining up,” I told my friend. “I
can be nothing other than happy right now.” My
wise friend smiled and nodded. And then she quietly uttered the sentence that I
still cannot get out of my mind. She
said, “So the question for you is: Can
you bear it?” Her
comment caught me off guard. I smiled
and kind of chuckled, the way I would when I am being teased and want to show
that I get the joke. But my friend
wasn’t laughing. She was carefully and
sincerely putting forth what she believed might be the real question of my life
at that point in time. Our
time together that day was nearing its end, so I told her that I needed to
reflect more on her question and we soon made our goodbyes. As
I walked home through my snowy neighborhood, I turned her words over and over
in my mind. “Can you bear it?” Can
I bear my happiness? Each
time I examined this precious jewel of a question, I caught a different hue of
meaning. It struck me like a Buddhist
koan, a riddle used to teach us that logic sometimes is not enough, that what
should be obvious often is hidden, and that enlightenment more readily comes to
those willing to take the risk to see life as the paradoxical enterprise it
truly is. What
does it mean to “bear happiness”? Bear
can mean “to carry”, like “bearing water.”
Could I “carry” this happiness?
Could I maintain it? Bear
can also mean “to have or display”, like bearing a name, or a visible mark, as
in a suit “bearing a flag pin.” Could I
“outwardly display” this happiness? Bear
might mean “to take responsibility for” as in “bearing scrutiny or the bearing
the challenge of a life’s calling.” Then
there’s the bearing of creation, as in bearing children or bearing fruit. Could I “create” happiness? These
are all appropriate definitions that, when applied to the “Can You Bear It?”
question, create interesting metaphors for those willing to engage in their
deeper meanings. But
the one definition that seemed the most paradoxical, and perhaps therefore, the
most intriguing to me, was the “to bear” that means “to endure or tolerate”.
When we talk about bearing something in this way, it’s always the bad stuff,
right? We bear rough weather…and flooded
basements. We bear jobs that drive us
nuts. We bear bad traffic, bad leaders,
bad food. We bear health challenges,
relationship challenges, financial challenges…. Wouldn’t
one definition of happiness, maybe even the most common definition of happiness,
be the absence of these kinds of challenges?
Was
I to believe, then, that even the absence of challenges is something to
be endured? Was my happiness something
that I was going to have to bear? Could
I “endure” this happiness? Could I
“tolerate” being happy? Perhaps
it seems absurd to even ask that question. To suggest that happiness is
something to be endured is to really see the glass half empty, right? Surely we
know people who would say, “Hey, just give me even the slightest taste of happiness,
buddy, and I’ll show you how to tolerate it!” And
yet. And yet…. The
question was beckoning that I go deeper. One
step deeper came when I read a poignant memoir by Kate Braestrup called Here If You Need Me. In this book, she shares the story of the
tragic highway accident death of her State Trooper husband, which left her a
single parent of four young children.
And she tells of her surprising journey to seminary and UU ministry that
followed and her current job as a chaplain to the Maine Warden Service, the
people who, among other jobs, are charged with searching for people who have
been literally lost in the woods, sometimes never to be found. She describes in
detail this life of ministry that at times threatens to rip her heart out, even
as it makes her abundantly happy… a life of ministry that covers all the
aspects of her life—her relationships with her children, her still ongoing
grief over her husband and the mourning for a life that was, and, her
chaplaincy with the brave and devoted men and women of the warden service. As she accompanies these wardens into
difficult searches for missing persons, and particularly when she sits vigil
with family members hoping and praying for their loved ones to be found, she
comes to one of the defining conclusions of the book. “A miracle,” she writes,
“is not defined by an event.” After all,
her husband’s death was a miracle by some definitions, as was her discovery
that she had become a minister. No, a
miracle is not defined by an event or the particular circumstances of our
lives. “A miracle,” she writes “is defined by gratitude.”[1] I
applied and translated her wisdom to my own ongoing “Can you bear it?”
meditation. “Happiness” I acknowledged,
is not defined by an event or even a lack of events. Happiness is defined by a constant,
undeniable sense of gratitude…even in the face of challenges. Maybe even especially in the face of
challenges. The
deeper meaning of the question “Can you bear it?” began to emerge: “Can you appreciate your life now enough to
carry you when circumstances will be different, as they most certainly will
be? Can you savor and learn from this
happiness and see it as the gift it truly is?” I
was getting closer to the truth I needed to find. Just
last week I read a biography of Dr. Norbert Capeck, the Unitarian minister who
85 years ago created the first flower communion service for his congregation in
Prague, Czechoslovakia. Every June here and in countless other UU churches, we
share the story of how Capeck wanted to create a ritual for his growing and
diverse church that would symbolize not only the variety of people present, but
gifts that await the members amidst this diversity. In the week before the
service everyone was asked to bring a flower, or even a twig, from a garden or
a shop. Upon arrival, each person was to
put his or her flower into a vase, signifying that each had freely chosen to
enter this service, each had freely chosen to enter the community. For Capeck, the vase was just as important as
the flowers, for the vase symbolized the church. He said, “We need [the church]
to help us share the beauties but also the responsibilities of communal
life.” It is through the church that we
are able to expand our influence for the common good beyond our individual
lives. It is through the church that we
can deepen our understanding of how to receive and how to give. After Dr. Capek blessed the flowers, each
person would leave the service taking a different flower than the one he or she
had brought—a symbol of acceptance of one another and of each person's unique
contribution to the life of the community. I’ve
always appreciated this ritual, much like Dr. Capeck did even the first time he
asked his congregation to do it. He
described the beauty of seeing the members each taking “one flower…just as it
is…without making any distinction where it came from and whom it represents”
thereby confessing “that we accept each other as brothers and sisters without
regard to class, race or other distinction, acknowledging everybody as our
friend who is human and wants to be good.” But
Dr. Capeck left us far more than a poignant ritual that we share each
June. He left us a legacy of a life
well-lived, even in the face of the most severe adversity. He left us an example of someone who could
most definitely “bear it.” His
life had many peaks but more than its share of valleys as well. Two times he was widowed with young
children. He was run off from more than
one church for being too liberal in his understandings of religion. He helped organize one of the most vibrant
congregations his native Czechoslovakians had ever seen, encouraging the people
he served to purchase a property so that they could have their own space, only
to see them face financial crisis after financial crisis. He was slandered by people he once thought
were his friends. And yet he
endured. He endured not just in spite of
his pain and disappointment, even though I’m sure the painful events of his
life didn’t ever fully leave him. No, I
think he would say that he endured because of his happiness, because he
had seen what was possible in human community, because he still held to the
ideal that, in his words, “The most important and useful spiritual activity is
the conscious and willing creation, changing, or even discarding of our mood,
and introducing a new and better example.”[2] Life
was one big, “Can you bear it?” enterprise and his consistent answer was a
resounding yes. When
the Nazi regime was bearing down on and finally occupying Czechoslovakia,
virtually everything that he and his congregation had taken for granted was
taken away. His beloved wife and
co-minister, Maja, escaped to the United States. Most of his children, now adults, scattered,
too. But he remained with his
congregation, believing in their mission more fervently than ever, the mission
of bringing people together to “practice the art of living a beautiful and
creative life” [3]
even amidst despair. Especially then. In
1941, the inevitable happened. Capeck,
now in his seventies, was arrested by the Gestapo and eventually sent to a
concentration camp at Dachau. Recorded
memories of those who knew him there indicate that his buoyant spirit, even in
the inhuman conditions of that camp, lifted up many of his fellow
prisoners. Amazingly, the result of
ingenuity we can only imagine, there are a few letters that remain from his
imprisonment, including one that was written the night before he was to be
transported from Dachau to what he rightly assumed would be his death. He
wrote, “My dearest, my one and only wife, These are my final hours and my final thoughts on you, the children,
on everyone and everything dear to me. I
have felt more and more, inside, that there is no other way out….I can bear the
remaining four or five hours, and I will not be downcast, but will rather give
myself over to thoughts of you all, who are most dear to me, the past and the
future—and about your good and happy future, so well-deserved, when you will
bring to fruition the best possible life, one that I would have been so happy
to have lived with you so simply, in the fullness of a tried and tested love
for others, and for God. I am faithful to my best and highest hope, resolve,
and belief, wishing everyone well, believing in the future good of all of you: the family, the nation, humanity, and
especially those most sorely tried.”[4] So,
this year’s flower communion has an added power and meaning for me. In its simple expression of the blessings of
religious community, of the privilege of learning how to give and receive, I
can’t help but think of Dr. Capeck and the way life questioned him over and
over, just as it questions us all. “Can
you bear it?” Can you bear knowing that
this life is what we make it? Can you
bear allowing yourself to feel gratitude for all that you have despite all that
you don’t? Can you bear the privilege and responsibility of building and
sustaining the beloved community where diversity is sought, where life is
celebrated, and where is love is the over-arching goal of it all? Can you bear
living as fully and as deeply as you can, acknowledging all of life’s limits,
even as you do your best to live with them and through them? Can
you bear it? I’m
still learning to say “yes.” How about
you? [1] Kate Braestrup, Here If You Need Me (New York: Little Brown, 2007), p. 181 [2] Richard Henry, Norbert Fabian Capek: A Spiritual Journey, (Boston: Skinner House, 1999), p. 181. [3] Ibid., p. 164. [4] Ibid., pp. 271-272.
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