MEANING: NOT THE READY-MADE KIND
8 February 2009
The Sweet Hereafter is a story about making meaning. Writer, Atom Egoyan, describes the devastation felt by the inhabitants of a very small Canadian town when a school bus full of children, practically all of the town's children, is plunged into the icy waters of a lake. 14 children die. Mothers and fathers, neighbors, school officials, everyone is caught up in utter grief. Everyone speculates inwardly and verbally, as to the exact cause – the person responsible - what might be the right thing to do. It was as if all the air was sucked out of their lives and they were left motionless. Every task, every conversation, everything reminded them of the child...the children they lost. They were bereft; deprived of a precious possession...a state of being...and innocence...that they would never recover. Not even in a court of law.
An attorney, played by Ian Holm, methodically canvasses the town in search of families...the right families...that would give the right testimony that in turn would garner a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the town, the bus manufacturer, the makers of the guard rails, the bus driver, and anyone else he could identify. Awash in grief and anger of his own regarding his equally grieving and angry daughter, he convinces the families that the answer to their questions of “why” and “purpose” can be found in mounting this lawsuit. Justice would be served, healing would be generated, lives and livelihoods made rich by going to court...again.
I believe it is part of our evolutionary nature to survive – to stay alive and thrive. But aside from food, shelter, friendship, achievement, and solving problems, we also crave meaning from the countless experiences we have; not just understanding the facts of a matter, but seeing how our thought-life and heart-life are sustained. Regardless if the experience was trivial or profound, pleasant or unpleasant, resolved or unresolved, good or bad...we look for keys that will unlock, or lines that will help us connect the dots to the scores of mysteries that come with being alive.
I'd like to think that nothing happens by chance and that there is “a purpose for everything under heaven” as the poet wrote in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible. But over time I've become ever so slightly a cynic. How so? I've seen good people and good organizations beaten down. I've seen babies born with horrific diseases. I've seen the guilty go free and the innocent imprisoned. I've seen poverty and affluence living side-by-side. I've truth suppressed and lies perpetrated as truth. So, I am convinced that everything has a meaning, but not always the positive one we'd like to attach to them.
I understand that there are people who have harmful agendas. That genes and cells mutate. That greed and irresponsibility are siblings. One cannot always hit a straight lick with a crooked stick.
Even so, I do have the habit of taking things seriously, not doggedly so, but with an eye that a scant few things are insignificant, utterly capricious, and pointless. Things and people and situations are important. So it is the big picture that I am always trying to get a hold of. I'm watching for patterns in the world...and in my own behavior and reactions to what I see and hear and am caught up in. I'm prone to ask myself what could be going on in the life of a person to make them want to react or a think in a particular manner. I'm wanting to know what influenced a group to choose or not choose a specific course of action, especially when the opposite of what they selected seemed to have been to their advantage.
In her book, The Dove in the Stone, Alice O'Howell counsels us with, We can only see half of everything. The other half is the meaning we give to what we see. In every tree, apple, flower, there is an aha! Waiting.” As I work on developing my skills at considering the perspectives and journeys of other people, I'm continually reminded that I must also work on developing my intuitive sense that allows me to “smell out” meanings hidden and dormant in life situations. And that has been the key for me, that there is not one meaning, but often multiple meanings. Maybe an inexhaustible amount. And why there are so many is due to the symbols and stories, analogies and metaphors that I can attach to them. Even, recognize the values assigned to everyday life by popular culture, philosophy, and the world's religions. To see them, to assign them, we must be attentive, open and hospitable.
Ann Bedford Ulanov, Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary says that “Meaning does not come to us in finished for, ready-made; it must be found, created, received,
and constructed. We grow our way toward it.” Many of our heartfelt prayers take the form of the question, “What shall I make of this?” The majority of experiences for which exude the most anxiety, or ask the question “why” or “for what purpose” are those that have to do with money, relationships, health, and work. And the areas we explore hoping to extract a measure of meaning are people, places, and other “sacred texts”... for instance an art studio, the gym, a bookstore, a garden, the company of friends. At some time in our search we have to ask ourselves whether the meaning we are seeking is found in security or risk; certainty or doubt. What have been the places, people, and other sacred texts where you have looked for meaning? What have been those places, people, and sacred texts where you have not? Why have you not expanded your search?
Not all of our experiences are as tragic as in the movie I described earlier. Yet, there are some that we have difficulty assigning meaning to. It is as if they resist being named. Maybe Rainer Maria Rilke's Letter to a Young Poet, can be instructive for us. He says, Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to live the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Try to love the question. Live with the question.
What are those questions that are unsolved in your heart? to which you can assign no meaning? from which you cannot find release? You know what it feels to live with these questions, to strain at finding a meaning...even a ready-made meaning. But not your own meaning.
Inside your program you will find two post-its. Sit for a moment or two and jot down a question, an experience, that has followed you for which you are at a loss to understand its part in the pattern of your life. What might be its significance for you right now? Write it down on one of the post-its. After you've done that, contemplate what help do you need as you live this question, live with this experience. It may be the help from another person. A return visit to a place. The disposal of an item. It may be none of these. Time will tell you what you need. Let's take a few moments now to attend to this task.
Hear these words from William F. Schulz, former executive director of Amnesty International, and past president of the UUA:
“Unitarian Universalism affirms:
That Creation is too grand, complex, and mysterious to be captured in narrow creed. That is
why cherish individual freedom of belief. At the same time our convictions lead us to other
affirmations;
That blessings of life are available to everyone, not just the Chosen or the Saved;
That Creation itself is Holy – the earth and all its creatures, the stars in all their glory;
That human beings, joined in collaboration with the gifts of grace, are responsible for the
planet and its future;
That every one of us is held in Creation's hand – a part of the interdependent cosmic web -
and hence strangers need not be enemies;
That no one is saved until we All are saved, where All mean the whole of Creation;
That the paradox of life is to love it all the more even though we ultimately lose it.
Amen and Blessed Be.
A sermon preached by
the Rev. Cynthia D. Heilman
Oberlin Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
Oberlin, Ohio
Sunday, 8 February 2009
