Ted Loder Rev. Pamela Rumancik Gentle Me, Holy One Into An
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Opening Words: Ted Loder Rev. Pamela Rumancik Gentle me, Holy One Into an unclenched moment A deep breath, A letting go Of heavy experiences Of shriveling anxieties, Of dead certainties, That, softened by the silence Surrounded by the light And open to the mystery, We may be found by wholeness, Upheld by the unfathomable Entranced by the simple and filled with the joy that is you. Readings: Start with a story… A Middle Eastern story tells of a man who is oppressed by his family. His wife dominates …His children make fun of him. He feels a victim, and thinks that the time has come for him to go away and find paradise. … meets an old sage who gives him detailed directions on how to get there: You have to walk for a long time, but eventually you will arrive. The man sets out. During the day he walks …exhausted he stops at an Inn to sleep. Being a precise and methodical man, he decides before sleeping to place his shoes pointing toward paradise so as to be sure not to lose his way. But a mischievous little devil sneaks in and turns his shoes around the opposite way. Next morning the man sets off, this time in the direction opposite the day before – toward his starting point. … the scenery looks more and more familiar to him. He arrives at the town in which he always lived, but he believes it to be Paradise: “How much like my old town Paradise look!” But he feels good there and likes it immediately. He sees his old house, which he thinks is Paradise: “How that looks like my old house!” But since it is Paradise he finds it very enjoyable. His wife and children greet him: “How they look like my wife and children! Here in Paradise everything looks the way it was before.” However, because it is Paradise, everything is beautiful. His wife is a delightful person, his children are extraordinary – they are full of qualities that he, in his daily life, never would have suspected to exist. “Strange how here in Paradise everything resembles so precisely what was in my life before and yet everything is completely different!” Thus ends our story… From Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott Rev. Pamela Rumancik 1 Anne Lamott describes leading a writing workshop for inmates at San Quentin. After describing how she told them the same thing she tells people at all her workshops, she describes her friend’s experience: Then I introduced Neshama, with a concern that the prisoners wouldn’t quite get her – this intense grandmother with a nice big butt and fuzzy gray hair, wearing a loud plaid flannel dress. I had invited her because I love her stories and knew it would be more fun for me… I had extremely low expectations – I hoped a few prisoners might form a guild, like the one to which Neshama belongs; I hoped they wouldn’t hurt her, or overcome her, or try to make her marry them. Neshama walked to the mike and told her first story, her version of a folktale. It was about a man with no luck, who comes upon safety, wealth, and a beautiful woman, but is too busy looking for fancier luck, somewhere else, to even notice her. Neshama painted the story with her hands, leaning into the crowd, and drawing back, hopeful or aghast at the unlucky man’s journey, smiling gleefully at the story’s close. And the place went nuts… Here they had thought Neshama was going to teach them a lesson, and she had instead sung them a song. Their faces lit up with surprise. She was shining on them, and they felt her shining on them, and so they shone back on her. .. Neshama stripped her story down to its essence, because only essence speaks to desperate people. And the men rose and gave her a standing ovation. It was a stunning moment. All she had done was tell them, “I’m human, you’re human, let me greet your humanness. Let’s be people together for a while.” Sermon: Grace in a Graceless Age Rev. Pamela Rumancik Full of grace, moments of grace, surprised by grace – all phrases which point to something that we recognize but find hard to define. In the physical sense we think of grace as the ability to move easily. When I wake up in the morning and my joints are stiff, I hobble to the kitchen and am anything but graceful. Grace in this sense brings up the image of an athlete flying down the field, avoiding opponents and smoothly making it to the goal; Or a dancer, lithely defying gravity and beautifully breaking free from the laws of nature which keep us so solidly on the ground. Or a beautiful horse galloping gracefully across a field – embodying joy, freedom, power, possibility. But there are other ways to look at grace. The Christian scriptures have Mary being greeted as Full of Grace – Full of the possibility of transformation – full of the entirety of God. Does this speak to us today? In later Christian theology grace had a very definite meaning. It referred to God’s gift of salvation through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Grace was a vehicle to be freed from the bonds of sin and death and welcomed into the kingdom of God. 2 In Hindu teaching grace has another flavor entirely – it could be described as the ultimate key to self understanding – not so much a gift as something that could be earned through hard work and dedicated practice. Through the Bakti yoga – which path of devotion you can open yourself up through worship and devotion to work toward Moksha – the freedom from the cycle of death and rebirth. But still – grace is an agent for change. So we have grace as a way of moving fluidly through the world; and grace as an opening for change. Why am I talking to you about grace this morning? While on first glance it might seem anachronistic in our post- modern world I believe it does offer us a new lens to look at our lives. Grace – as an opening or possibility for change is extremely important – especially today. We find ourselves stuck in so many ways. We get stuck in unhealthy relationships, in unfulfilling jobs, in self destructive patterns of behavior. Our country seems to be stuck in a giant pattern of immobility. Our leaders argue but make no movement forward, our economy seems stalled. We keep doing the same things over and over while expecting new results. Grace: we need grace. Not a supernatural answer from some other realm – but as a way of approaching and living in the world which allows the possibility of newness. In my life, moments of grace which stand out are those places where something changed, where a perspective that hadn’t been visible suddenly opened up, when new possibilities became apparent. They can be small moments – One I remember clearly is driving on my way to work on a summer morning. I turned past a field I saw every day and something seemed to catch my eye. A sparkle or glint across the wet farmer’s field. I looked over and was struck by the rich green of the day, noticed the fresh moist morning air, really felt as if someone had just winked at me conspiratorially from the other side of the field – inviting me to appreciate the glory of that morning. I did. I breathed it in. I still remember it decades later. That was a moment of grace. A place where I was called out of my mindless reverie – was opened to the beauty of the morning in a way that took my breath away. They can be moments initiated by someone else – the time Mrs. Teitlebaum complimented my essay in 9th grade and said I was a fine writer. Me? A writer? It was not a thought that had occurred to me before and it opened up a whole new definition of self. I count that as a moment of grace because she recognized and called forth a dimension of myself that I had not been aware of. It gave me permission to live into that new self identity. It both revealed and invited. A moment of grace. A place where I was called out of my narrow identity and invited to new possibilities. 3 They can be totally mundane – driving in Chicago traffic. A thing up until recently I did on a daily basis on my commute to the hospital where I worked as a chaplain. Some days things I would just chug along – lost in a song, thinking about bills, wondering what the day would bring. I dutifully follow the car in front of me and trust I’ll get where I’m going eventually. Other days however seem to flow. I’m awake and aware, gaps open seemingly like magic, and I move along at wonderful pace. Tiny mundane moments when those opportunities to move present themselves – and I am able to take them. And then… those scary moments, when some noodkin swerves right in front of me and I am able to avoid the collision and continue, gratefully, to work. My life has been opened in front of me. I am still here. I am grateful. A moment of grace. A place where awareness allows possibilities which might otherwise be missed; which might otherwise end badly. Last night Karen and I went to see the movie “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” - very entertaining.