Bright Light of Hope A Sermon by Reverend Lynn Strauss

You are invited to be with me and participate with me in the sermon this morning. I found out reading the paper yesterday that I have something in common with Yo-Yo Ma. During his performance at the National Cathedral on Thursday evening, he stopped between the third and fourth movements of Bach’s six Suites for cello – sensing a reticence from the reserved audience- he held his priceless 1712 Stradivarius over his head and implored the crowd to stand and applaud…he asked for an embodied, physical, response to the music. He didn’t want to be playing alone…in a congregation, or a concert hall, the listeners are hoped-for participants in the celebration of art…and spirit. So let me see and hear your participation this morning!

So…taking lines from our reading…repeat after me… “I am brilliant! I am gorgeous! I am talented! I am fabulous!” Hang these words on your bathroom mirror or over your desk…repeat to yourself throughout the day!

Still me until I hear your heartbeat Quiet me until I feel your breathing Make me one with your rhythms Move me to the cadence of your love. -Jan Richardson

Cadence of your love…what a lovely phrase.

We are entering a season of quiet waiting…we are preparing for the holidays!

What are we preparing for? What are we preparing for on this second day of December?

We think of preparing as a busy thing…we make lists. We pull out dusty boxes from the basement planning for Tradition making…in our homes, in our sanctuary, and even in our hearts.

We want things to be the same….as the good years. Or as last year…or as that most memorable year. It is fun and meaningful to craft the holiday season… To hang lights, decorate trees, bake cookies and pies… Wrap presents big and small. Light the Hanukkah candles. Watch beloved holiday films.

But even as we prepare, we feel the knot of fear that rests near our hearts with every national crisis…every news cycle. Our task in these dark days is to life up hope…to be aware of where the light shines in.

For we are preparing for something more than the usual…more than the familiar holiday experience? Might we be preparing to be our powerful selves…our brightest, glorious selves? Might we enter into the season to be liberated from our fear…to let our light shine? To bring hope to the world.

It is the first Sunday of Advent in the Christian calendar. Advent means a time of “coming” - coming into a place, coming into view – coming into being. An arrival. It is a time of preparing…waiting-traditionally it is anticipating the birth of Jesus. What might be arriving in your life? Something new is on the horizon. What might it be? Will you be ready?

I have so many questions. What are we UU’s preparing for? What will birth out of the dark winter days… We don’t know what may come…and yet, we wait…preparing with cups of tea or hot cider, with books or screens on our laps…with family or alone….we wait.

I come to this season with a desire to be still. To walk in the snow. To gaze at the night sky. To rock a newborn child while all the world sleeps around us. But I also have a desire to feel more alive!

This year our family anticipates a birth…a baby…our son and daughter-in-law are expecting within the week. Her parents, her brother, her cousins, her aunts and uncles, her grandparents…all wait for the miracle of a new life.

What a blessing! We wait on threshold of before and after… Perhaps that is what we are all preparing for…the after. What comes after? After today, after this service, after the sermon, after this week, After now….

What will come to us in the next hour- in the next day? And how do we wait? How do we prepare for what we cannot yet see or know?

What is about to arrive in our lives, in our nation? In the world? What will come next for those made homeless by the California fires? What will come next for the families in the Caravan at the Mexico border? What will come next in our marriage? With our health? For our children? After college? In our new job? After a disappointment? A death? How can we possible prepare for what we do not yet know.

We are standing, sitting, weeping, fearing, dancing, singing on the threshold of what is coming…what is coming into place, into view, into being?

Put down your lists of things to do. Let go of expectations and assumptions. Open to the unknowable. Welcome the surprise. Be ready for anything. Be ready to welcome whatever comes. Pay attention to where the light comes in.

Let me tell you just a little about one of our early UUCR families- The Leonards. George and Phyllis came to Rockville in the 1950’s with their three children, Jeffrey, Elissa and Jonathon. Phyllis was the Director of RE here for a time…

She was born in Boston in 1929, growing up in Roxbury where much of her extended family lived together in a big once elegant old house. Both of Phyllis parents were deaf. Phyllis said that “from the beginning, learning was my life”. She attended Girls Latin School and Radcliff college… She met George in 1946 at a streetcar stop in Cambridge. They were secretly married in 1949, as their parents did not Approve.

George upon returning from WW II had won a spot at Harvard On the GI Bill by writing an essay on the liberation and administration of Mauthausen Concentration Camp, in Austria, Where he had been part of the troops liberating the camp. George was awarded a Bronze Star Medal for Valor, Purple Heart, combat Infantry Award and three Battle Stars. George went on to a career in the Public Health Service.

George was among those from UUCR, who went to Selma, AL During the Civil Rights movement responding to the plea for support from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Phyllis went on to a career in education in Mont. County, twenty four years of teaching and writing curricula for gifted students. She wrote a book on school libraries as environments that bring out the giftedness in all children.

After retirement, George became interested in spirituality and read and wrote extensively in areas of Science Fiction. Phyllis became a docent and storyteller at the Corcoran and Kreeger Museums.

Phyllis died almost 10 years ago…and George lived on alone at King Farm’s Ingleside. George died just weeks ago.

I could talk on and on about George and Phyllis and their children and grandchildren. Their son, Jeff Leonard was founder and managing partner of Global Environment Fund, spending his career in constant pursuit of visionary ideas and people. He and his wife Carolyn were major donors to Beacon House, A UU program for neighborhood children in DC. They gave to many other programs that were specifically for children. Sadly, Jeff died unexpectedly in mid-October.

I think daily about the recent grave losses in the Leonard family and the grieving extended family here and in California.

But what I want to stress is the spirit of Phyllis and George, both from humble backgrounds, both avid learners, both important activists and generous givers of UUCR and both Open to the surprises and opportunities of their lives.

There is no way to fully prepare for what life brings…but being Open and holding to one’s values…is essential. And in this way of living well, we will not know all of the good and all of the hope and light we might bring into the world.

Let us give thanks for Phyllis and George Leonard and their family. There have been a blessing to us all.

There is much we do not know. How does suffering come into the world? We can’t always know, but we live the suffering…along with the suffering world.

How does healing come into the world? We can’t always know, but we live the healing…along with the healing world.

How does justice come into the world? We can’t always know, but we live the justice…along with the rest of the world.

How does the light come into the world? I believe it is through communities of faith, and through faithful living.

As Marianne Williamson says…we are all children of God…children of the Universe… We hear one another’s heart beat We share in the quiet and in the music Until we feel the breath of each and all We move toward hope in a sacred rhythm A rhythm that becomes courageous love- And thus a universal move toward justice

We are powerful beyond measure and we are not alone. We are born to make manifest the glory that is within us… The sacred power we share by creating communities of love.

So join me….Prepare with the practice of stillness. Simply wait. And notice where the light comes in.

Clear your desk, your mind, as if it were a garden prepared for winter. Prepare your heart to receive the holy in whatever form it comes.

Care for yourself and others…as you wait. Feel how you hold to the threshold…tipping forward, leaning back…naming your strength, holding your center…Be still within yourself.

Be prepared to fall….when the moment of after comes…be prepared to let go and fall….

For you live at the threshold of love. A love that holds all…all joy , all sorrow, all pain, all possibility….all old, all new….all yes.

Be still and fall into love. Still me until I hear your heartbeat Quiet me until I fell your breathing Make me one with your rhythms Move me to the cadence of your love.

May it be So