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“BRINGING MAGIC to OUR ORDINARY LIVES” a Sermon in Many Voices

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“BRINGING MAGIC to OUR ORDINARY LIVES” a Sermon in Many Voices “BRINGING MAGIC TO OUR ORDINARY LIVES” A sermon in many voices Rev. Lilia Cuervo & Elizabeth Nguyen March 27, 2011 ********* I am so excited doing this service because I love to hear how people do so many different things to add color and magic to their seemingly ordinary lives. Elizabeth, would you like to share with us how have you turned something that could have been plain and ordinary into something magic? Elizabeth. Sure. Sometimes being able to experience our world as magical is a vision problem. Ordinariness can make us tunnelly in our vision. Our periphery closes in on us and all we can see is that one starred email we really need to respond to or the T gates as we spring towards them, Charlie card at the ready while the voice saying without compassion, without empathy, Braintree Train, Braintree Train arriving. Magic is remembering to see the sun on the inside of my eyelids when I’m squinting, magic is letting my vision catch on small children or a stranger’s smile or a beautiful leaf. And it’s practice, at least for me. One of the things I try to remember to do when I find myself getting all tunnelly and losing the rest of the world is to practicing seeing the beauty in every person who walks by – it could be the rumpled shirt of an otherwise very purposeful, put together business person – beautiful! or the sticky fingers of a toddler just finishing a popsicle – beautiful! or the neon cast of young girl covered in the ‘get well soon!’ beautiful! Lilia. For me, an attitude of openness is essential to put magic in my ordinary life. When we are in an attitude of openness, with our six senses alert, (the sixth being our intuition), waiting for each new moment, the soul can navigate with tranquility in a sea of possibilities and uncertainties. The attitude of openness allows us to flow with the circumstances without resistance or much analysis, but rather, enjoying the moment, without passing judgment on it, or wishing it better than it is. We must remember that each moment is perfect unto itself. Just being able to breath is magic! Seen through the eyes of the soul, all is magic: the little bunch of grass shooting out of a crevice on a sidewalk, a small patch of garden, a flower pot, a fly, even a cockroach. We can find perfection even in those critters that make us cringe, if only we truly wish to take the time to see them for what they are. I remember when I was a child being mesmerized by the ants processing in such perfect formations, greeting each other, and being mindful of their little cargos on their backs. Butterflies were my delight. Big, small, all colors and designs on their wings. Part of the childhood delight in the world is precisely to see the world with fresh eyes without ulterior judgments. Healthy children don't fear expressing their emotions. Childhood wisdom dictates that children live intensely open and in the moment. Elizabeth. Magic is realizing that everything has a story: In his short story “Do Not Go Gentle,” Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene, poet and writer, says “We humans are too simpleminded. We all like to think each person, place, or thing is only itself….But that’s not true at all. Everything is stuffed to the brim with ideas and love and hope and magic and dreams.” (The Impossible Will Take a Little While) So it is with other things – a bowl is a bowl is a bowl. But I have this one bowl – this one bowl that my friend Mya’s parents made. It comes from Shell Lake Wisconsin and after that it was in an apartment in Minnesota and now it lives in Somerville MA. It’s held birthday cake and breakfast, confetti and even once, a small potted plant. I love wearing clothes that have stories – I feel like then I get to wear all these stories, all of the magic of our interdependence and where we’ve been and where we might be going to. I have an engagement ring of my great grandmother’s – her name was Amelia Odelia Hungerford. She went away to New York City to train as a nurse but during the influenza epidemic she came home to rural Western New York to work in the family restaurant because so many people got sick. The story goes that everyone thought she would be a lonely old spinster, the girl who could have been a big city professional but ended up serving pie and coffee when one day the most eligible bachelor came in to the diner and she brought him a cup of coffee and they fell in love. This story is really problematic for a number of reasons. She probably would have done just fine without him. But I love wearing her ring – something I don’t do very often - because it feels like it has all the power of the adventurous spirit that took her to New York and the commitment to family and the resilience that got her through life changing her dreams. Alexie is right: “We all like to think each person, place, or thing is only itself. But that’s not true at all. Everything is stuffed to the brim with ideas and love and hope and magic and dreams.” How magical would my world be if I could feel all the stories of all the mundane and not so mundane things I’m surrounded by every day. Lilia. Somebody said that “play is an expression of character and of soul.” And our famous Emerson said that: “It is a happy talent to know how to play.” And we can add that is also a happy talent to know when to play. I have been able to bring to my life, in general, a certain attitude of playfulness. This attitude has helped me in times of uncertainty and of waiting. When I am facing a change of route, when what I expected didn't happen, or when I begin to feel premonitions that a period of my life is about to end, I begin to play detective. I try to sharpen my senses. I pay attention to clues and signals in every place. Perhaps what somebody says, or the way he or she says it, or a book that is brought to me without asking for it could bring the needed message. Even a word on the bumper of a truck could bring an answer. Or a dream. One time when I was waiting for weeks to hear if I was going to go to Brazil to do some research, I had this dream in which “O Senhor do Corcovado” bowed with his arms extended and smiled at me. I woke up and jumped out of my bed totally sure I was going. That day the ticket arrived. Elizabeth. For me, there is also magic in resistance. In another one of Sherman Alexie’s short stories, magic comes to mean a certain kind of strength, strength beyond all oppression, strength that explodes all hate, the strength of survival. Alexie writes, “Years ago, homosexuals were given special status within the tribe. They had powerful medicine. I think it’s even more true today even though our tribe has assimilated into homophobia. I mean a person has to have magic to assert their identity without regard to all the bs, right?” (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven). There is magic in being able to be who we are without regard in the face of oppression. It requires magic to, in Maya Angelou’s words, rise, despite all. Lilia. I am convinced that in the spiritual journey of adding magic to the ordinary, it is of paramount importance to cultivate also an attitude of reverence. I, for one and I know I am in good company, believe that all things, even the smallest or seemingly inert, have their own souls and their missions in life. Sometimes when I am cooking or eating, something might fall on the floor, like a piece of fruit or vegetable. Automatically I throw it in the garbage. As soon as I do that, I feel a twinge of sadness, thinking that because of my action that piece could not fulfill its mission of nourishing my body. Does anyone of you here, have similar thoughts? In (Spiritual Literacy by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat) Mary Hayes-Grieco talks about onions this way: “I see God in onions. I always have. I remember when I first saw my mother slicing into an onion when I was about six. I stopped my playing, awestruck. What is this vegetable that is so pure, so watery-white, so many-layered in concentric rings that make mounds of perfect circles as they fall open onto the cutting board? ... Red onions are specially divine. I hold a slice up to the sunlight pouring through the kitchen window, and it glows like a fine piece of antique glass.” There is so much extraordinary in the ordinary! To know how to find it, to be able to see God, the awesome mystery, the life giving force in all that is, is really an art. However difficult this art might seem, one can learn it little by little, by paying attention, by having vision, by displaying an attitude of openness, by realizing that everything has a story, by regaining the playfulness of childhood, by resisting the forces of oppression and by relating to everything with an attitude of reverence.
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