Barbara Kingsolver, in her novel Demon Copperhead, has Demon say this:
“… she looked at me in the eyes, and we were sad together for a while. I’ll never forget how that felt. Like not being hungry.”
Like not being hungry.
She looked at me in the eyes, and we were sad together for a while.
I’ll never forget how that felt.
Like not being hungry.
Have you ever been seen like that by another person? Have you ever shared such a deep understanding, be it of sadness or of some other emotion? Do you know that feeling, of not being hungry?
I first came to this church in 2014 because I had met someone during a residential training course on community organising. The course participants came from community organisations, from trade unions (me), and from faith groups (the person I met).
He and I discovered that, not only did we have shared values and a shared vision for a better world, but that the internal dynamics and politics of trade unions closely resembled the internal dynamics and politics of churches. So much to talk about!
Some months later, the politics of the Anglican Church spat him out and he fell on his feet here, in this church, as your minister, Clay Nelson.
Unitarians are a mixed metaphor. Roots from flora, wings from fauna.
There is no exact Greek mythical creature to represent this idea but perhaps we can think of a dryad or tree-nymph, maybe combined with a phoenix, the bird who rises.
We are a mixed metaphor and a mixed faith, one that values pluralism and whose hymn book is called Singing the Living Tradition.
I preached in this church last year on Easter Sunday. My theme was resurrection — I spoke about the power of love over hate. In the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Knowing that when life is gone, love is left for shining.”
Since then, as most of you know, I have become a widow. My husband and your minister Clay Nelson died last November. In preparing for this year’s Easter Sunday service, I have read all eight of the Easter sermons he preached here in this church. I have seen that he talked about the necessity of experiencing Good Friday if we are to experience Easter.
I have recently watched all three seasons of Ted Lasso.
I had been aware of the show for some time but had been put off by the moustache, and the fact that it seemed to be about sport. Though I admire physical grace, I really don’t care about all the winning and losing and fighting over a ball.
I had been missing out. Ted Lasso is a gift.
It is a gift that slowly unwraps. When one of the characters, Danny Rojas, says, “Football is life”, I like his joy but really don’t connect. Football isn’t my life.
Turns out though, that in Ted Lasso, football is a metaphor for life. Turns out that Ted Lasso himself really doesn’t care about all the winning and losing either. He cares about community and people being their best selves. He’s probably a Unitarian, though that doesn’t get mentioned in the script.
Why do we repeat this ritual every year? It isn’t just to brag about our travels. When we share our water in the common bowl, it reminds us that while we are separate people, we are also part of an interdependent community.
You probably know about the water cycle.
We are in the middle of this cycle. When we drink about 2 litres of water every day, and then sweat or urinate, or die, we put water back into the water cycle. So water is constantly on the move.
Even if you didn’t study chemistry, you might well know that water is a molecule made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. This molecule being tiny, if you had 18 grams of water, or a little more than half an ounce, that would be about 6 x 10^23 [pronounced: “six times ten to the twenty-three”] molecules.
This would be 602 sextillion molecules. If you were a 10 year old child weighing 35 kilograms you would contain 20 litres of water or 20,000 grams or 602 septillion molecules. That child returns ten percent or two litres to the water cycle every day.
Because water is constantly cycling around, and because every human being has such large numbers of molecules of water cycling through them, there’s a very good chance that each one of us has at least a few molecules of water that were formerly in the bodies of Socrates, Sappho, Jesus, Mohammed and the Buddha, and any number of great and wise people who lived in the past as well as some of history’s villains.
Thus when we say that we are all interconnected, that statement is quite literally true — we are all interconnected through the water cycle, not only with each other, but with all living beings past and present. Jesus, Billie Holiday, Te Puea, Buddha, your grandmother, my grandmother, our first minister, William Jellie all might be literally be connected to you through water.
I now invite you each to bring your water – and if you didn’t bring it, please feel free to use the virtual and also real water here in this pitcher, that can stand in for the water you are connected to. Those at home, if you have water, pour it; and we will also pour water for you here.
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
“Through the Looking Glass”, Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
We know, because of science, the enlightenment, telescopes, that compared with us, the universe is big. We may have seen that meme that shows two photos of the Milky Way, one taken before, and one taken after we have made a mistake: clue, it’s the same photo.
My musing today has as its starting point, not Alice, actually, but the quote: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
My sermon topic “Bending the arc of the universe” has taken liberties with the quote already, and may seem arrogant – how could we bend the arc of the universe? – but I am aiming rather for audacious. As Paul said when I sent him my title, “May as well aim big.”