What a perfect time for Thanksgiving! This is the season where we can fling the windows of our dwellings wide open and hear the earth call. Fall is the time to be grateful. For all the gifts we have been given without ever asking for them. Let us then listen to the birdsong and watch those Technicolor sunsets, pick your lemons my friends and make lemonade. Welcome the cold! Our hearts, heavy from too much bad news and anxious from too many invisible fears need these golden autumn days. This Thanksgiving let us hold those we love close to our hearts for we have been reminded once again how precious and fragile our lives really are. Let us once again remind each other that we hold the world, in our fragile human hands and that the earth itself needs our care.
My heart is overflowing with gratitude and hope. All I have to do to feel good right now is look at the beautiful stole this congregation gave me at my installation. What a beautiful evening that was. Thank you doesn’t begin to cover it. And now that we have each other, so to speak, the windows of the future are flung wide open and for just this moment, anything seems possible. So let us rest for just a moment before rushing headlong into the next project and good works and give thanks!
There is lots of good work to do and great metaphorical mountains to climb and we will accomplish much together. We will get to if not all then most of it.
But for now, this Sunday let us rest and learn to listen. The earth’s voice is echoing in every beat of our heart. The sacred is not out there somewhere above the skies it is here among us. We rest this morning in the gentle embrace of the great web. Each of us are an entire galaxy of atoms, electrons, sub atomic particles too small to see swirling like solar systems, forming the illusion of a solid body. Somewhere in this Universe as I speak stars are born, somewhere as we sit here this morning stars are dying. Outside our doors and outside of this busy Valley the desert waits. Jackrabbits look for cover on the median of the freeway and coyotes run across our mall parking lots. What are we humans doing with our endless building, construction and cars? The brown cloud that hung for weeks over our Valley came from our human actions, as we tore open the fragile desert crust. And yes, I too enjoy what all this prosperity brings, my cool house, the pool, the paths I walk in my landscaped neighborhood. But let us stop and think and figure out how we can do as little damage as possible. Before we destroy much of what we came here for. There seems to me to be signs everywhere.
Energy is becoming scarce, and our boundless appetite for consumption is having expected and unexpected consequences. There are times when we seem to be tearing at the web of life itself. My version of what is profane may well be air pollution and holes in the ozone layer. Arizona has the highest rate of skin cancer in the nation. We should care about ozone here. Why are there so few cars in the car pool lane? How about a commuter train? We know the solutions and yet we do not act. Earth hangs in the balance. Earth our one and only home. There are still times when we are reminded of our deep connection to the earth. But it is not that often. And therein lies the problem. It is only when we see the rest of nature, the rest of that interdependent web as sacred in such a way that we would not dream of harming it, that we will at last wake up. Worship means to lift up that which is of worth. Wild places, rainforests, rhinos and our own back yard sanctuaries are they of enough worth that we will preserve them? We as Unitarian Universalists do have a special responsibility. For us nature has been sacred a long time. One of my favorite quotes that I will use again this Sunday is by William F. Schulz, past president of the Unitarian Universalist Association. He writes: “Hundreds of years ago St. Lawrence asked: Whom should I adore; the Creator or the Creation? Most Western religions have answered back: adore the Creator. And supplied an image (Zeus, Jehovah, Christ) to be adored. But our answer is far different. Whom should we adore? The Creation surely, for whatever there be of the Creator will be made manifest in her Handiwork.
This is a fundamental departure from religion’s preoccupation with abstraction. It is not a distant, mysterious God to whom we make appeal or even the cold vagaries of Progress, Evolution, Creativity, or History. The Gods and Goddesses—or if you prefer, the most precious and profound—are accessible to us in the taste of honey and the touch of stone.
And this in turn is why we love the earth, honor the human body and bless the stars. Religion is not a matter of Things Unseen. For us the Holy is not hidden but shows its face in the blush of the world’s exuberance.”
In these words Schultz echoes our history and points to our future Early Unitarians saw God manifest, present and immanent in nature, a very different view from the fear of the untamed wilderness that also permeated early American history. Nature and Nature’s God is interwoven with our religious history. So we have a special responsibility it seems to me, as prophets speaking for the wilderness, for sanity and reason in our relationship with the earth. Yes, I confess that at times this liberal UU minister is tempted to become a 21st century Jeremiah. Shouting not in the wilderness but for the wilderness.
You see it becomes quite personal: I speak for the rabbits here!
And yes, I do have a thing about Rabbits and Hares. They are in a sense my totem animals. That is why I had a picture of one on the front of my invitations and the order of service for my installation. Some of you have told me that you are really curious as to what this rabbit fixation is all about. Well let me reveal then the mysteries of the rabbit.
Nature to me has always been a source of solace and a place where I found what I consider to be sacred. I listen for and hear God’s voice in the wind, the birds, the rustling of leaves, the sound of water running over smooth stones and yes, also in the dangerous creatures, in the harsh rattle of a desert snake. All are strands in the great web, all sacred, evolving, changing, interwoven dark with light, the sacred cycles of life, birth and death. For me knowing that our human lives are tapestries of joys and sorrows interwoven, indivisible, cycles connected to the rest of this universe well, this gives me comfort. When I was fourteen my grandmother, whom I loved dearly, died after six weeks in bed suffering with a broken hip, long before there was such things as hip replacements. She died in the early evening hours and once I knew she was gone I had to go looking for her. So I went outside in the summer garden, stood under an old apple tree and looked up through the labyrinth of twisted branches, hung heavy with ripe apples, and looked to the stars to see where she had gone. In the silence and the rising of the August moon I found her again. And yes, in that garden as in most well tended gardens there were rabbits that came out to feed at dusk.
But that is not all there is to my rabbit story. When I was seventeen I went through dark and difficult time. I could find neither meaning nor comfort in my life. And as you may remember when you are that young you believe that what you are feeling, your desperation and deep sadness will last forever. One advantage of growing older is that you have by then survived so many sorrows that you know you will likely make it through this one too. But at that age I did not know this. And I had decided that the only way out of this pain was to end my life. So I went to a tall hill with a steep drop off point and I sat there on the edge very still trying to get enough courage to jump. Around me were tall beech trees and as I sat there in despair I took one last look around. And as I did out of the forest came a rabbit, hopping over the tree roots until it came very close to me. We sat there in silence looking at each other for a long while. The rabbit in all its furry wonder and with its ears moving from side to side, aware, listening, seemed like a sign to me that life was worth living after all. I thought of my grandmother and wondered if she had sent me one last message. And when the rabbit left I too stood up dusted myself off and went home. That rabbit saved my life. Had I jumped I would likely have died for it was an almost vertical fall. And my son would never have been born, I would have no granddaughter, I would never have met my husband and I certainly would not be standing here today in this pulpit talking to you about gratitude.
The rabbit to me is the beauty of life. It means survival and gratitude. It is nature’s teacher. With its long ears it reminds me to listen to others, to my conscience, to the earth itself.
That is one reason I became a Unitarian, because of our long and strong tradition of seeing God as manifested in Nature. But I remain one because of the hope I have that we will make a difference in this world and for this world.
Let me end today’s sermon, which is really about gratitude, by inviting each of you to think of all you have this particular Thanksgiving to be grateful for. It does not have to be really big things either. I really think that whatever the reality is behind the word God, he, she or it has a great sense of humor.
Every day on my way to church I drive by a field of green in the middle of strip malls and housing developments. For the last week this field has been filled with a huge flock of sheep grazing, standing, lying and making me laugh out loud. So I give thanks for whimsy too. What is on your list of Thanksgiving? Does it go from A to Z? Let the voices of nature fill the rooms of our hearts this season and heal our wounds. Thank you! Amen and so be it.