"It is the silence between the notes that makes the music...the space between the bars that holds the tiger." Jacob tells us, "our life is a vessel...formed for two functions. One is to hold...the other is to pour."

After the Gold Rush. I'd like to think that's an appropriate title for this sermon. It's borrowed from a Neil Young song written back in the early 1970's. It was a song about a nightmarish dream the song writer had depicting humanity scrambling to create some kind of a future after finally abusing the planet to death.

That's a bit more of a gold rush than I'd anticipated dealing with this morning, but I fear it may be one that's in the offing if we don't somehow come to terms with the smaller gold rushes leading in that direction. It may be what's in store, too, if we neglect to heed the message of Jacob the Baker. It's "the silence between the notes ...the space between the bars...our life is a vessel" an alef, an empty space surrounded by form for holding and for pouring." It seems this message is a pertinent and timely one, both on a personal and even on a national level.

Personally, we have just closed out another year, yet another gold rush season of holidays. We've been thankful for our blessings; celebrated the festival of lights and the Macabean liberation of the Temple; we've rejoiced over the first fruits of harvest and the libations of Kwanzaa; we've commemorated the nativity of Jesus and the birth of hope; we've reveled with some degree of pagan abandonment in the New Year; we've made the merchants a bit more wealthy (or at least earnestly attempted to redistribute some the nation's wealth); we've consumed great quantities of holiday treats, and meals, and drinks; and we've run ourselves just a bit ragged making sure not to miss out on any opportunity of Yuletide frenzy!

Would we do it again? Of course we would, and we will, next year. That's not the point (although, maybe it would be a good idea to pay some heed to moderation next time around, if we didn't do so well in that regard). The point is though, we need special times in the year-when the pace is quickened, when we are called upon to be gracious in the giving of ourselves to others; when we are beckoned by the sun and the moon and by each other to be more than we ordinarily are, so that we might see a bit more clearly just what we are capable of being and doing. We need special times when, as Jacob says, we are vessels that pour out. That's a part of being human.

Another part of it though, is our need for special times in which to hold and to hold onto. Jacob was struggling to learn how to pour out what he'd been saving up. Our challenge seems to be more the reverse...learning to save up and hold.

If we are going to create a milieu for holding, we need to provide ourselves the time and space for filling up so that we'll have something to hold. We're not so good at that part, not as a culture. At a pace escalating with a rate akin to the Dow Jones average, we go faster and faster trying to do more in order to get more. We're wound up so tight, that often, long after the main event, we're still spinning Śround and Śround. That wears on all of us, both physically and spiritually.

In days of old, following the holidays were the long slow nights and the brief days of winter. Down time, a time for the mending of harness, as well as the soul. We may have fooled nature with our artificially warmed and well lit habitats. Still, we've not allayed our human yearnings to slow down, to dream, to lay low, to replenish our spirits, to fill up once again. Our culture doesn't promote the time and space for soulful rejuvenation.

I speak with many of you who tell me you feel like you're running on empty. It's small wonder. If our lives are going to be vessels capable of holding, we have to allow ourselves the time and the space to fill up. We can't fill ourselves up by jamming our vessels full of stuff. We can't fill ourselves at all. It can only happen by allowing the natural and spiritual process of regeneration.

When we fail to take the time to fill up though, and when we fail to first hold on to that which we eventually will have to give, our offerings start to come from nearer and nearer the surface. We deplete our reserves. Eventually, our activities are generated by what comes off the top of our heads instead of from the depths of our hearts. If we want our lives to be different than what the systems we live in promote, we need to change the way we function in them, or we need to change the systems.

Given the state of our national affairs, maybe it is time to change the systems. It feels like our fast paced, gold and power grubbing lifestyle has collectively caught up with us. It's been building for years, but this past year particularly, we've been engaged in one of the more colossal gold rushes of all times, and we are running on empty.

On our national political scene, all the major players have been trying to grab the prize. No one has taken the time to hold onto anything of value. President Clinton, sacrificing honor and trust, has sought mega-doses of lust and power. Kenneth Starr, lusting after his own brand of power and notoriety, has tried to make his independent star shine brighter than those of leaders elected by the people.

The House of Representatives, in its attempt to grab political opportunity, has promoted tawdriness over decency and a zeal for partisanship over thoughtful cooperation. The national press, in its obsessive competition for market share, has sacrificed information for innuendo, and has replaced responsibility for the national interest with a penchant for exploiting a growing national prurient curiosity. And the American public, with its insatiable appetite for mindless titillation, has been panning and mining for all the glitter it can get.

With enormous consequence, we can see that these actions are generated by what comes off the top of our heads. They are incredibly divorced from anything that can be found near the depths of our hearts. That's why I said I hope that After the Gold Rush is an appropriate title for this sermon.

I pray that we are moving past this era of unquenchable appetites for tremendous amounts of trivial distraction. Let us all pray that sanity and wisdom and compassion can be found and utilized by the Senate as it moves forward with the contentious and arduous task that has been delivered it. If it is to be so, though, it will require a discipline unlike anything we have witnessed in our leadership for a very long time. On what strength will they draw? The vessels of our lives, and of our nation's life, are capable of holding contents of such great value.

As I've considered and prepared this sermon over the past week, the thought of the Religious Right has come to mind a number of times. And I have to say that I experience some sympathy with that group's diagnosis of our social ills: our culture is at serious risk of calamity because of a lack of religious values.

Rest assured that I'd be hard pressed to find a common definition of religious value with those of the Right. Nor could I corroborate their prescription for the treatment of our ills. But it does seem that a lack of earnest religious and spiritual mooring has set our culture adrift, and we are quickly depleting the contents of our moral, ethical supplies.

It is the silence between the notes...the space between the bars...our life is a vessel...with two functions...to hold...and to pour. We need to slow down so that we might find that which we ought to take more seriously.

Still waters run deep. We, too, can reclaim our depths by being still, by heeding the season, by creating the time and the space for rest, and renewal, and for dreaming. We are more than human doings; we are human beings. We not only have a birthright to simply be, we have a deep seated spiritual yearning for it.

The time is on us for lying low, for refilling our vessels. We need the time in our individual lives, so that they might become the lives we are capable of living, instead of a reaction to the rat race, a rebuttal to the rush for the gold. Our nation needs for us to make this space in our lives, so that we might aspire to be a saner, a more just and compassionate country, striving toward ideals and not foolish ideation. Our human race, too, needs for us to create for ourselves this time and space for healing and reopening. Humanity cannot reach its highest heights if we continue running on empty.

The choice is ours; the responsibility is ours. We can deny our spirit and soul only at our peril. We risk it all when we continue to deplete the spiritual resources that have given us life, that have lifted us up and out of the mud, that have made us human beings.

We are a liberal religious people. That doesn't give us license to be irreligious. It compels us to define for ourselves what it means to be religious.

We are a liberal religious people, and that doesn't mean that we have the right to disregard spiritual discipline. It may mean that we have little regard for piety, but it holds us responsible to set and to fulfill a spiritual discipline that will allow us to live the most whole and most holy lives we are capable of living.

We are a liberal religious people, and as we reach this down time of the year, as we reach this critical moment in the history of our nation, we are called upon to be vessels capable of holding the value and the worth of a lifetime. We will need all the prayer and meditation, all the stillness and quiet, all the spaces between the notes, all spiritual discipline we can muster in order to allow ourselves to be refilled once again.

The opportunities for responding to need, the opportunities for pouring out will be ever waiting our attention, ever deserving of our response. And so, that we might be better prepared to respond to life from the entirety of our being, let us be in this season, let us attend to the mending of the soul, let us be filled from the alef, the silent space, from which creativity is the gift that awaits us.

The blessings of life are ours; may we allow them the time and the space to be fulfilled.