The River of Loss A sermon by Rev. Fred Small First Parish in Cambridge, Unitarian Universalist February 26, 2012

Our reading this morning is from the Gospel according to People magazine, the sixth of February, 2012, beginning on the 54th page.

Heidi Klum & Seal: End of the Fairy Tale The Project Runway host, 38, and the Grammy winner, 48, stunned family, friends and fans by announcing that after much “soul-searching” they had decided to separate after almost seven years of marriage. “[W]e have grown apart,” they told People in a joint statement. [Seal and Klum have four children: Leni, 7, Henry, 6, Johan, 5, and Lou, 2.] [The couple had] reinforced [their] commitment throughout their union with over-the-top romantic gestures. Seal proposed to Klum in 2004 in an igloo adorned with rose petals and a bear-skin rug atop a 14,000-foot-high glacier in Whistler, British Columbia. The engagement ring was equally jaw- dropping: a yellow diamond weighing in at more than 10 carats. After they wed in May 2005 on a beach in Costa Careyes, Mexico, the two renewed their wedding vows on every anniversary with a spectacular party ranging from a masquerade ball to an ’80s-themed get-together. “I don't know why I got so lucky,” Klum said of meeting her Mr. Right. “I have to pinch myself often and say, ‘Is this just a dream?’” At the November 2007 Victoria's Secret fashion show, the pair performed “Wedding Day,” a song Seal wrote about their own nuptials. “Family, my wife and children, that's my reason for being,” he said. The smiling couple seemed as close as ever during a Christmas 2011 getaway in Aspen. Three weeks later, she attended the Golden Globe Awards alone, before officially telling People on January 22 that the twosome were separating.

Here endeth the reading. Our fascination with celebrity reflects the delicious paradox of awe and disdain we feel for the rich and famous: awe at their talent, their wealth, their beauty, and disdain when they stumble and act foolishly, as of course all human beings will. The bigger they come, the harder they fall, and many of us who cheer their ascent take a perverse pleasure in the descent that inevitably follows. And so I reacted with equal parts sorrow and (I am embarrassed to admit) satisfaction when I read of the split of Heidi Klum and Seal. What was up with renewing their marriage vows every year with extravagant costumes and lavish parties? Methinks they protested their love too much! How else could the bang of such ostentatious public proclamation of mutual infatuation and eternal fidelity end but in the whimper of disillusionment and divorce? They worshiped an idol of their own happiness and it shattered at their feet. Oh I was smug! Smug! I was bursting with the judgment of the righteous! And then I realized: I do the same thing. All the time. Not with their material excess (I can’t afford it!) but with emotional and spiritual excess perhaps even more costly. I, too, make an idol of expectation that the things I love will endure. And they never do. Not for long. Certainly not forever. Yet every time they fail, somehow I am again surprised. An idol of expectation. Don’t we all bow down to that leering false god and worship it? Again and again we are seduced by the illusion that what we have we shall keep, and what we love will never die. But we keep nothing. And everything we love dies. Everything. Paulist Father Thomas Ryan tells the story of Debra, a dancer and college student at Ohio State University. She became a campus minister, married, had children. But Debra began to suffer mysterious physical symptoms eventually identified as multiple sclerosis. The body that had served her so faithfully, that had made possible the joy of dance, failed her. She raged. She wept. She prayed. And something began to shift in her soul. “Somewhere in this time of letting go of my own expectations and dreams,” she wrote, “a new place was unfolding in my spirit. I began to appreciate that all of life is a gift. . . . every breath, every sight, every sound, every person . . . There is no agenda other than that of loving. . . . All I need to do is to make the choice for love. No matter what limitations my body lived—even with legs that no longer worked—I could still dance my life. . . . Each day, whenever I choose to love . . . I am no longer disabled. I am a new creation of love’s energy abounding.” On Halloween morning in 2003, thirteen-year-old Bethany Hamilton went surfing with friends off the coast of Kauai’s North Shore in Hawaii. As they lay on their boards waiting for a wave, Bethany dangled her left arm in the water. Suddenly she saw a flash of gray, felt two swift tugs, and saw the water blossom red. A fifteen-foot shark had bitten off her arm at the shoulder. Her friends managed to tie a rubber surf leash around her shoulder as a tourniquet and raced her to the hospital. Despite losing nearly half her blood, Bethany survived. At first she believed her life as a competitive surfer was over. But her doctor said, “The list of what Bethany will have to do differently is long; the list of what she will be unable to do is short.” As soon as the stitches were removed, Bethany was back doing what she loves most: surfing. Not only is she competing against surfers with two arms, she is beating them, winning international surfing contests. “Ninety-nine percent of the time,” she says, “I don’t even think ‘What if’ or ‘Why me’ questions. I accept having one arm as who I am. Every once in a while, I’ll blame things on only having one arm, but then I stop myself because I don’t want to have that kind of attitude.” Last Sunday some of us from this congregation were privileged to hear Bishop Carlton Pearson preach at All Souls Church, Unitarian, in Washington, DC. In the 1990s, Bishop Pearson was the beloved and admired pastor of a megachurch in Tulsa,

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Oklahoma, a rising star in the firmament of Christian televangelists, a member of the board of his alma mater, Oral Roberts University. But one day, distraught by a television program about the Rwandan genocide, Carlton Pearson heard what he believed was God’s voice telling him there is no hell, no eternal damnation, only love from a loving God. When he began to preach a Gospel of Inclusion, Pearson was cast out by his evangelical and Pentecostal colleagues and mentors, repudiated by his friends, condemned as a heretic. When his congregation fled, he took the few hundred remaining to All Souls Unitarian Church of Tulsa. This is what he told us last Sunday:

When six thousand people walked away because they didn’t understand my theology, I had to stop. Now I’m not Bishop Pearson or Pastor Pearson or the apostle or the evangelist or the high-profile Christian celebrity minister anymore all over television, everybody knowing me. I had won awards for Gospel music, had written several books. Now it seemed that nobody loved me, and for the first time in my life I had to ask the question, “Do you love you?” I had family members leave town, moving to be away from me. . . . so now I’m standing there, and the question came to my mind, “So they don’t like you. Do you like you?” Outside of your performance orientation, outside of the imposter, outside of the impersonator. “Do you love you?” And I had never thought of that before, and I had to say: I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I never thought of that. Never felt worthy of love apart from performance. Never had experienced self-love but had learned how to navigate self- loathing. I adjusted to not encountering and not knowing and not feeling and not experiencing whoever the real me was, because the real me loved me and loved everybody.

The 13th-century German mystic Meister Eckhart declared that spiritual life “is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.” That process of subtraction is called life. Life is a river of loss that bears everything away. Good times. Bad times. Jobs. Careers. Parents. Children. Lovers. Bodies. Minds. This precious earth. I’ve been lucky—incredibly lucky—in my life, blessed with good health, a good family, good education, all kinds of opportunities and experiences. The river of loss will take away all of it—every last thing—as it will take away everything of yours. The river is rising all around us, lapping at our ankles, surging over sandbags, snatching whatever it can, but patient because there is no escaping it. One night last week Julie and I were driving fast down the Mass Pike. Suddenly a tractor-trailer moved into the lane directly ahead of us.

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The roadway was dry and there was plenty of room to brake and I did, and there was no imminent danger really at all, but just seeing that huge rig slide in front of us with all its monstrous power and speed reminded me how fragile life is. This time—this time we escaped with our lives and drove home to our child and her babysitter. But we can’t escape loss. Nobody can. We have to face it. We have to face it. And when we do, it loses its power. We must be willing, says the Vedantist teacher Gangaji, “to experience the pain of loss, and in that experience to discover what is untouched by any loss . . . .” “When you have lost a loved one,” she says, “or lived through . . . the . . . horrors of . . . war, or of being hated, or . . . abused . . . it can feel as if . . . the pain has ripped open a hole in the fabric of your being and the life force has flown out of you. . . . In dreams and memories, [loss] announces its hold on us. As we revisit or run from it, it remains in charge. We believe it to be the master of us. It isn’t. When met fully without either resistance to the loss or hope for return of what was lost, astoundingly and simply, the ache of loss is revealed to be insubstantial. . . . The story we tell about our loss . . . only serves to keep the feeling of loss intact. . . . [R]elease the story,” Gangaji says, “Release the story and let your attention penetrate the feeling.” Who am I? If I’m not the Senior Minister of First Parish in Cambridge, who am I? If I’m not a husband, who am I? If I’m not a father, who am I? If I’m not a singer and songwriter and guitarist, who am I? If I’m not a big strong guy, who am I? If I’m not a thinker and a writer and a speaker, who am I? If I’m not my body, who am I? If I’m not my mind, who am I? Who am I? If I don’t know now, someday I will find out. Why wait? Why wait? The 13th century Franciscan mystic Ramon Lull wrote:

They asked the Lover, “Where do you come from?” He answered, “From love.” “Where are you going?” “To love.” “To whom do you belong?” “I belong to love.” “Who gave you birth?” “Love.” “Where were you born?” “In love.” “Who brought you up?” “Love.” “How do you live?” “By love.”

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“Where do you live?” “In love.” “What is your name?” “Love.”

Amen and Blessed Be.

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