 | The Fruit of What's Gone Aug 23, 2020 A Lay-Led Worship Service with Mary Phillips Looking at what is gained from loss. |
Service Details
Ringing of the Bell
Invocation & Opening Words
Prayer
So Far Apart and In This Together
By Erica Rose Long
"I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do
the something that I can do."
—Edward Everett Hale
Everyone's cries sound different on the phone. Over the phone I cannot see how their faces change, how their bodies tighten as they try to hold back tears and relax when they finally surrender and let the tears fall. That’s what I’m used to.
Now, I listen over the phone as children play in the background, as dishes are washed, as the woman I’m speaking to turns on her blinker so she can park her car and cry. When I talk to someone on the phone, they continue to do whatever they were doing before I called. Their surroundings stay the same while their life breaks open in grief. We don’t have the comfort of the family room in the hospital—a neutral space we can share, and they can then leave forever—to share a horrific moment. Now, they’re at home and I’m in my room—the same room I will try to sleep in tonight. Everything changes, and nothing changes.
I never thought it could be possible to be “work-sick.” I miss my desk. I miss the elevators in the hospital. I even miss my commute. I miss all the little annoyances that separated my work from my home. Without those boundaries of time and space, I feel my heart struggling to maintain boundaries.
I tell the woman crying on phone, “This is my number; call me anytime.” I wouldn’t have done that six months ago. But I do now. The boundaries are so wide and so thin. We are all so far apart and yet we’re in this together. I stay on the phone and I cry with you. I hang up the phone and I pray for you.
Every day things change. Every week things change. I miss the way things were, and I know they’ll never really be the same. And yet, while everything is still so tender and uncertain, I am grateful. I’m grateful that this is my job. I’m grateful that you picked up the phone. I’m grateful that I get to live another day, and I get to do it with you.
Prayer
That Which Is Holy and Loving and True, hear our prayers: prayers for healing, kindness, resiliency, and courage. Prayers that our bodies and our spirits will survive this time of unimaginable loss. Thank you for giving us each other. Thank you for giving us hope. Amen.
Invocation & Opening Words
Prayer
So Far Apart and In This Together
By Erica Rose Long
"I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do
the something that I can do."
—Edward Everett Hale
Everyone's cries sound different on the phone. Over the phone I cannot see how their faces change, how their bodies tighten as they try to hold back tears and relax when they finally surrender and let the tears fall. That’s what I’m used to.
Now, I listen over the phone as children play in the background, as dishes are washed, as the woman I’m speaking to turns on her blinker so she can park her car and cry. When I talk to someone on the phone, they continue to do whatever they were doing before I called. Their surroundings stay the same while their life breaks open in grief. We don’t have the comfort of the family room in the hospital—a neutral space we can share, and they can then leave forever—to share a horrific moment. Now, they’re at home and I’m in my room—the same room I will try to sleep in tonight. Everything changes, and nothing changes.
I never thought it could be possible to be “work-sick.” I miss my desk. I miss the elevators in the hospital. I even miss my commute. I miss all the little annoyances that separated my work from my home. Without those boundaries of time and space, I feel my heart struggling to maintain boundaries.
I tell the woman crying on phone, “This is my number; call me anytime.” I wouldn’t have done that six months ago. But I do now. The boundaries are so wide and so thin. We are all so far apart and yet we’re in this together. I stay on the phone and I cry with you. I hang up the phone and I pray for you.
Every day things change. Every week things change. I miss the way things were, and I know they’ll never really be the same. And yet, while everything is still so tender and uncertain, I am grateful. I’m grateful that this is my job. I’m grateful that you picked up the phone. I’m grateful that I get to live another day, and I get to do it with you.
Prayer
That Which Is Holy and Loving and True, hear our prayers: prayers for healing, kindness, resiliency, and courage. Prayers that our bodies and our spirits will survive this time of unimaginable loss. Thank you for giving us each other. Thank you for giving us hope. Amen.
| Song: Wake, Now, My Senses, #298 Wake, now, my senses, and hear the earth call; feel the deep power of being in all; keep, with the web of creation your vow, giving, receiving as love shows us how. Wake, now, my reason, reach out to the new; join with each pilgrim who quests for the true; honor the beauty and wisdom of time; suffer thy limit, and praise the sublime. | |
| Wake, now, compassion, give heed to the cry; voices of suffering fill the wide sky; take as your neighbor both stranger and friend, praying and striving their hardship to end. | Wake, now, my conscience, with justice thy guide; join with all people whose rights are denied; take not for granted a privileged place; God’s love embraces the whole human race. |
| Wake, now, my vision of ministry clear; brighten my pathway with radiance here; mingle my calling with all who will share; work toward a planet transformed by our care. https://farfringe.com/stlt298-wake-now-my-senses/ |
| Chalice Lighting Welcome Of Our Hearts Meditation On Breathing, StJ #1009 | |
| | Time for All Ages “The Memory Tree” by Britta Teckentrup From YouTube by Helen Dewdney, The Complaining Cow storytelling |
| Song: Lean On Me, StJ # 1021 Sometimes in our lives we all have pain, we all have sorrow. But if we are wise we know that there’s always tomorrow. Chorus: Lean on me when you’re not strong and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on, For it won’t be long ‘til I’m gonna need somebody to lean on. Please swallow your pride if I have things you need to borrow, For no one can fill those of your needs that you won’t let show. Bridge: Just call on me brother when you need a hand. We all need somebody to lean on. I just might have a problem that you’d understand. We all need somebody to lean on. | Chorus Bridge If there is a load you have to bear that you can’t carry, I’m right up the road, I’ll share your load if you just call me. Call me… call me… https://farfringe.com/stj1021-lean-on-me/ |
Offering and Invitations
Sermon: “The Fruit of What's Gone” by Mary Phillips
When I showed up here in 2016, I had just experienced a loss that I believed was insurmountable. I had lost more than I thought I could survive losing. I would have done very nearly anything to prevent it. And yet--
And yet look at me now, addressing you, my friends and cohorts. I look back now at the life I was trying to salvage, to fix, or even to bear, and realize it was filled with despair, hopelessness, and fear.
We like to say, sometimes, “If only I had known then what I know now, I could have made better decisions.” Or, “I could have been more at peace.” But, friends, I will tell you now, that even if I had known then what I know now, I still would not have chosen it.
I would not have suffered that loss willingly. It was too hard. The pain was too dire. Even while swimming in the waters of fear and despair, I would not have chosen the terror of letting go of a sinking ship, on the slim chance I might make it to shore.
It was one of those situations where the consequences just seemed too dire to even contemplate--where the loss was incalculable and the consequences irreversible.
And yet, here I am. And maybe more importantly, I realize that my grief was not timely. By the time I was grieving, the actual loss had long since happened. I did not grieve at the actual time of my loss.
I'm not here to talk about me, though, only to show how our personal struggles can inform our understanding of the other grief we experience.
As a congregation, maybe to a lesser extent, but as a congregation, many of us have grieved the loss of Reverend Rachel, and the pit of uncertainty in which we found ourselves after our hopes were raised and then dashed in the first round of ministerial candidates.
We had no back-up plan. We felt bereft. Without. And yet--
And yet we find ourselves today looking toward growth in new directions. We find ourselves energized, and optimistic about our prospects of fulfilling more of our aspirations, more of what we wished we could accomplish, but toward which we did not yet see the path.
Again, though, that loss had already happened. That loss had already happened when Reverend Rachel Baker signed her contract. It was already arranged that she would move on, but still we grieved. We would not have chosen to lose our first prospects for ministerial leadership. The consequences for this congregation seemed too dire.
I could stop here, and it would be a comforting picture. The realizations in my life, about being willing to contemplate hope, even when I can scarcely conceptualize it, can barely imagine it, those concepts have easy correlations to the life of the congregation.
Today, though, in this nation and on this planet, compassionate people and people of conscience are in great pain. Our grief and fear can feel overwhelming. Our nation is facing crises in leadership, culture inequality, healthcare inequality, certainly justice inequality.
How can I apply my personal epiphanies to these crises? I look at George Floyd. None of us would have wished that fate on him. None would wish to add the weight of the consequences of centuries of institutionalized cruelty to the burden he bore due to others' inability to honor his humanity. We would not choose it. The pain is too deep. His death is too high a price to pay. The consequences are too dire. And Yet--
And yet, consider please the sheer weight, the critical mass of outrage which was catalyzed by his unjust and inhumane suffering. The Black Lives Matter movement has achieved a shape and a momentum that we could scarcely imagine just a short time ago. We could wish for it, but it seemed so distant. We yearned for, but could not believe it could be so soon, so close. People from various and sundry populations, communities, and cultures (even countries) have taken up the cry that Black Lives Matter. The light has been shone on the pervasive nature of a system which never meant to allow equality in the “inalienable rights” to which we so often like to refer.
And again, we grieve for George Floyd, and for ALL the George Floyds. If we started naming the victims of our unjust system, we would never stop. We grieve now, but of course the cause of that unjustified murder had already happened. The flaws in our system had already taken the lives of too many people to comprehend. Again we are too late in our grief, but still we grieve.
Politically, the lack of clear leadership causes many of us pain. The system caters mercilessly to those who already have, for the benefit of nothing more than a decimal on a balance sheet. No one hungry is fed because of the windfalls of the greedy. None are housed. We grieve the selfishness which has found its way to the very heart of our country's principles. And Yet--
And yet there is the possibility on the horizon that a portion of us, more in number, certainly, than ever before, are willing to contemplate a government that functions FOR the people...but this time ALL the people. It is certainly a moment of political catastrophe, no doubt, but civil unrest and healthcare disparities and insufficient pay for the workers actually most ESSENTIAL to the functioning of our daily lives, all these have served to shine lights into dark corners of our systems. More and more people see the inequity that SOME of our American family have always known and understood and suffered.
I borrow heavily from the poet Langston Hughes when I say, If we grieve too late for the American Dream, it is because we allowed ourselves to believe we lived in an America that has NEVER YET existed.
Finally, I grieve for our planet. The damage we have done is obscene. The territorialism of our species is obscene in its quest to divvy up land which belongs to the Earth, in order to keep things away from those of Earth's inhabitants which require them. We hire security guards to protect empty buildings while other humans in our midst are without shelter. Because of our alleged LOVE of nature, we build and change and ruin land that separates essential pieces of the natural world from the resources they require to continue. Human beings are responsible for 75% of all plant and animal extinctions since the year 1500. In the last 50 years global average temperatures have risen by at least 170 TIMES more than any natural rate ever discovered in geological data. We have acidified the oceans to a degree NEVER seen in the geological record of any period. We have suffered a biodiversity loss only ever observed during natural mass extinction events. We have filled the oceans and its creatures with plastic.
We cannot, we did not, people of compassion and people of conscience would not, could not choose the level of destruction and peril into which we have plunged our planet. And Yet--
And yet, we have just the gift of immediacy at our feet. Every generation that has been told that their grandchildren may not have a natural world to enjoy, has somehow been willing and somehow able to kick that can down the road to the next. There is none of that left. Scientists don't disagree. We've tipped the scale, we've engaged the inevitable feedback loop. Prevention is no longer possible. Mitigation is the emergency which can no longer be disguised. We grieve!
What do we do? How do we live every day with the fresh horrors of our personal, our congregational, our national, and our global crises, failures, and loss? On this hand is political catastrophe, systemic inequality based on pretty much any discriminator you can imagine, global climate atrocities which only can multiply—and on THIS hand you have....”And Yet?” How can I reconcile these things?
We grieve at the wonders and tragedies of this world. We are in mourning. Let us take the jagged daggers of our grief and turn them into the means for change, toward what remedies are left us still to honor what's gone.
I pray, when I pray, for the courage to love my family enough, my congregation enough, my country enough, and my planet enough to search out and to honor the fruit of what's gone, every day—to grow the memory tree into something beautiful and sustainable that feeds our hunger for justice. May I find the courage. May we.
I grew up in the Judeo-Christian Tradition, I rejected its literalism fairly early, but I am still comforted by its poetry and metaphor:
In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah spoke of the last days when the Word would come forth from the highest peak to settle disputes for many people, and among mighty nations.
Isaiah, Book 2, Verse 4 reads:
“They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they learn war anymore.”
Blessed Be and Amen.
Sermon: “The Fruit of What's Gone” by Mary Phillips
When I showed up here in 2016, I had just experienced a loss that I believed was insurmountable. I had lost more than I thought I could survive losing. I would have done very nearly anything to prevent it. And yet--
And yet look at me now, addressing you, my friends and cohorts. I look back now at the life I was trying to salvage, to fix, or even to bear, and realize it was filled with despair, hopelessness, and fear.
We like to say, sometimes, “If only I had known then what I know now, I could have made better decisions.” Or, “I could have been more at peace.” But, friends, I will tell you now, that even if I had known then what I know now, I still would not have chosen it.
I would not have suffered that loss willingly. It was too hard. The pain was too dire. Even while swimming in the waters of fear and despair, I would not have chosen the terror of letting go of a sinking ship, on the slim chance I might make it to shore.
It was one of those situations where the consequences just seemed too dire to even contemplate--where the loss was incalculable and the consequences irreversible.
And yet, here I am. And maybe more importantly, I realize that my grief was not timely. By the time I was grieving, the actual loss had long since happened. I did not grieve at the actual time of my loss.
I'm not here to talk about me, though, only to show how our personal struggles can inform our understanding of the other grief we experience.
As a congregation, maybe to a lesser extent, but as a congregation, many of us have grieved the loss of Reverend Rachel, and the pit of uncertainty in which we found ourselves after our hopes were raised and then dashed in the first round of ministerial candidates.
We had no back-up plan. We felt bereft. Without. And yet--
And yet we find ourselves today looking toward growth in new directions. We find ourselves energized, and optimistic about our prospects of fulfilling more of our aspirations, more of what we wished we could accomplish, but toward which we did not yet see the path.
Again, though, that loss had already happened. That loss had already happened when Reverend Rachel Baker signed her contract. It was already arranged that she would move on, but still we grieved. We would not have chosen to lose our first prospects for ministerial leadership. The consequences for this congregation seemed too dire.
I could stop here, and it would be a comforting picture. The realizations in my life, about being willing to contemplate hope, even when I can scarcely conceptualize it, can barely imagine it, those concepts have easy correlations to the life of the congregation.
Today, though, in this nation and on this planet, compassionate people and people of conscience are in great pain. Our grief and fear can feel overwhelming. Our nation is facing crises in leadership, culture inequality, healthcare inequality, certainly justice inequality.
How can I apply my personal epiphanies to these crises? I look at George Floyd. None of us would have wished that fate on him. None would wish to add the weight of the consequences of centuries of institutionalized cruelty to the burden he bore due to others' inability to honor his humanity. We would not choose it. The pain is too deep. His death is too high a price to pay. The consequences are too dire. And Yet--
And yet, consider please the sheer weight, the critical mass of outrage which was catalyzed by his unjust and inhumane suffering. The Black Lives Matter movement has achieved a shape and a momentum that we could scarcely imagine just a short time ago. We could wish for it, but it seemed so distant. We yearned for, but could not believe it could be so soon, so close. People from various and sundry populations, communities, and cultures (even countries) have taken up the cry that Black Lives Matter. The light has been shone on the pervasive nature of a system which never meant to allow equality in the “inalienable rights” to which we so often like to refer.
And again, we grieve for George Floyd, and for ALL the George Floyds. If we started naming the victims of our unjust system, we would never stop. We grieve now, but of course the cause of that unjustified murder had already happened. The flaws in our system had already taken the lives of too many people to comprehend. Again we are too late in our grief, but still we grieve.
Politically, the lack of clear leadership causes many of us pain. The system caters mercilessly to those who already have, for the benefit of nothing more than a decimal on a balance sheet. No one hungry is fed because of the windfalls of the greedy. None are housed. We grieve the selfishness which has found its way to the very heart of our country's principles. And Yet--
And yet there is the possibility on the horizon that a portion of us, more in number, certainly, than ever before, are willing to contemplate a government that functions FOR the people...but this time ALL the people. It is certainly a moment of political catastrophe, no doubt, but civil unrest and healthcare disparities and insufficient pay for the workers actually most ESSENTIAL to the functioning of our daily lives, all these have served to shine lights into dark corners of our systems. More and more people see the inequity that SOME of our American family have always known and understood and suffered.
I borrow heavily from the poet Langston Hughes when I say, If we grieve too late for the American Dream, it is because we allowed ourselves to believe we lived in an America that has NEVER YET existed.
Finally, I grieve for our planet. The damage we have done is obscene. The territorialism of our species is obscene in its quest to divvy up land which belongs to the Earth, in order to keep things away from those of Earth's inhabitants which require them. We hire security guards to protect empty buildings while other humans in our midst are without shelter. Because of our alleged LOVE of nature, we build and change and ruin land that separates essential pieces of the natural world from the resources they require to continue. Human beings are responsible for 75% of all plant and animal extinctions since the year 1500. In the last 50 years global average temperatures have risen by at least 170 TIMES more than any natural rate ever discovered in geological data. We have acidified the oceans to a degree NEVER seen in the geological record of any period. We have suffered a biodiversity loss only ever observed during natural mass extinction events. We have filled the oceans and its creatures with plastic.
We cannot, we did not, people of compassion and people of conscience would not, could not choose the level of destruction and peril into which we have plunged our planet. And Yet--
And yet, we have just the gift of immediacy at our feet. Every generation that has been told that their grandchildren may not have a natural world to enjoy, has somehow been willing and somehow able to kick that can down the road to the next. There is none of that left. Scientists don't disagree. We've tipped the scale, we've engaged the inevitable feedback loop. Prevention is no longer possible. Mitigation is the emergency which can no longer be disguised. We grieve!
What do we do? How do we live every day with the fresh horrors of our personal, our congregational, our national, and our global crises, failures, and loss? On this hand is political catastrophe, systemic inequality based on pretty much any discriminator you can imagine, global climate atrocities which only can multiply—and on THIS hand you have....”And Yet?” How can I reconcile these things?
We grieve at the wonders and tragedies of this world. We are in mourning. Let us take the jagged daggers of our grief and turn them into the means for change, toward what remedies are left us still to honor what's gone.
I pray, when I pray, for the courage to love my family enough, my congregation enough, my country enough, and my planet enough to search out and to honor the fruit of what's gone, every day—to grow the memory tree into something beautiful and sustainable that feeds our hunger for justice. May I find the courage. May we.
I grew up in the Judeo-Christian Tradition, I rejected its literalism fairly early, but I am still comforted by its poetry and metaphor:
In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah spoke of the last days when the Word would come forth from the highest peak to settle disputes for many people, and among mighty nations.
Isaiah, Book 2, Verse 4 reads:
“They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they learn war anymore.”
Blessed Be and Amen.
| | Musical Interlude: Ella's Song by Sweet Honey in the Rock Refrain: We who believe in freedom cannot rest We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes |
Verses
Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons
Is as important as the killing of White men, White mothers’ sons
And that which touches me most is that I had a chance to work with people
Passing on to others that which was passed on to me
To me young people come first, they have the courage where we fail
And if I can shed some light as they carry us through the gale
The older I get the better I know that the secret of my going on
Is when the reins are in the hand of the young who dare to run against the storm
Not needing to clutch for power, not needing the light just to shine on me
I need to be just one in the number as we stand against tyranny
Struggling myself don’t mean a whole lot I come to realize
That teaching others to stand up and fight is the only way my struggle survive
I’m a woman who speaks in a voice and I must be heard
At time I can be quite difficult, I’ll bow to no man’s word
https://ellabakercenter.org/blog/2013/12/ellas-song-we-who-believe-in-freedom-cannot-rest-until-it-comes
Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons
Is as important as the killing of White men, White mothers’ sons
And that which touches me most is that I had a chance to work with people
Passing on to others that which was passed on to me
To me young people come first, they have the courage where we fail
And if I can shed some light as they carry us through the gale
The older I get the better I know that the secret of my going on
Is when the reins are in the hand of the young who dare to run against the storm
Not needing to clutch for power, not needing the light just to shine on me
I need to be just one in the number as we stand against tyranny
Struggling myself don’t mean a whole lot I come to realize
That teaching others to stand up and fight is the only way my struggle survive
I’m a woman who speaks in a voice and I must be heard
At time I can be quite difficult, I’ll bow to no man’s word
https://ellabakercenter.org/blog/2013/12/ellas-song-we-who-believe-in-freedom-cannot-rest-until-it-comes
Let’s Talk About It
1. Is there a time you're willing to share where one loss brought another, unexpected gain?
2. Is there something you heard today that reminded you of something in your life?
3. Do you have a grief or a gratitude you need to share?
1. Is there a time you're willing to share where one loss brought another, unexpected gain?
2. Is there something you heard today that reminded you of something in your life?
3. Do you have a grief or a gratitude you need to share?
| Song: Come, Come, Whoever You Are, StLT #188 Come, come, whoever you are, wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. Ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again come. https://farfringe.com/stlt188-come-come-whoever-you-are/ | |
Closing Reading
By Michael A Schuler
An ending, or merely prelude to more glorious beginnings?
We have reached the end of this time
For the gathering of memory
And for letting the imagination play with future possibilities.
We have enjoyed magic moments and edified each other.
Shall it be concluded, then?
Or will this adventure, now commenced, continue?--
Our separate paths converging, meeting, merging
In the unending quest for love more perfect,
The joyous struggle for meaning more sufficient and life more abundant.
Is this ending to be an ending,
Or merely prelude to new, more glorious beginnings?
I pose the question;
In your hearts lies the answer.
Closing Prayer
"I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do
the something that I can do."
—Edward Everett Hale
Chalice Extinguishing
By Michael A Schuler
An ending, or merely prelude to more glorious beginnings?
We have reached the end of this time
For the gathering of memory
And for letting the imagination play with future possibilities.
We have enjoyed magic moments and edified each other.
Shall it be concluded, then?
Or will this adventure, now commenced, continue?--
Our separate paths converging, meeting, merging
In the unending quest for love more perfect,
The joyous struggle for meaning more sufficient and life more abundant.
Is this ending to be an ending,
Or merely prelude to new, more glorious beginnings?
I pose the question;
In your hearts lies the answer.
Closing Prayer
"I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do
the something that I can do."
—Edward Everett Hale
Chalice Extinguishing
#UUCLV #UU #UnitarianUniversalist #UnitarianUniversalism #UUCLVEvent #SundayService #loss
