Sermons

'The Scarlet of the Maples'

Our reading is the poem, "A Vagabond Song" by the much loved, early 20^th Century, Canadian poet, Bliss Carman.

When people ask about your favorite season, is it an easy question for you to answer? Spring is filled with such grandeur and the freshness of lavenders, yellows and greens. As life reemerges from the dark soil, it lifts our spirits right along with it. Then the lush summer leafage holds us in the richness of its verdancy — promising plenty; providing no less. Winter, with its sharp contrasts of blacks and whites, of light and darkness, offers clarity and the time for seeing the rudiments of things.

The seasons are all so wonderful and so essential within the spinning cycles of life. But for me it’s always been autumn. I’m just more at home in the fall with its, "touch of manner," and its, "hint of mood." Ever since I could remember, I do remember the feelings it invokes in me.

The cooling crispness of the air secures the awareness of my own heat emerging from my body. The sun, tethered low on the horizon, staying close to home, reminds me of being called home myself, hurrying inside before the darkness would fall completely. And the changing colors — the yellow and the crimson and the purple — they were, they are, my colors. And none more so than the scarlet of the maples. Autumn, fulfilling its role as usher to the season of slumber, gathers together all that has gone before it, and creates with it a masterful montage of spectacular beauty…until it simply lets go.

I know who I am more in autumn. I don’t ever long for it to arrive before its appointed time. But in September when I feel the onset of its yielding rhythm, there is an eagerness that sets in like the anticipation of a visit by a dear, old friend. And when October stirs its variegated breeze, my friend and I walk together, and remember, and appreciate, and dream.

So when people ask me what is my favorite season, there is no question in my mind, or in my heart, or in my body. It is the season when, "The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry/ Of bugles going by." It is the perfect time to consider death, while life is still a cherished treasure, still a hopeful hunger.

I think that’s part of the reason why I began to feel depressed early this last week. My season of sanctification was among the collateral damage of this new war of which we find ourselves in the midst.

Like many of you, when the bombs began to fall a week ago from planes bearing our nation’s flag, I was not surprised like I’d been a month before when other planes had become bombs themselves. I was not surprised, but I was equally horrified. I am always horrified by violence — my own or anyone else’s. And too, when our bombs began to fall, I found myself afraid, afraid of further losses… losses of innocence, of beauty and of truth.

I know that like many of you, since the bombs began to fall, I have also been unable to imagine any viable, reasonable or realistic alternative to the bombings. There are alternatives, I know, but I still haven’t heard of any that are viable, reasonable or realistic. And that was the most depressing part.

I’m a pacifist, a Conscientious Objector. My pedigree goes back to my great grandfather who fled Germany over a century ago to avoid the Kaiser’s draft. And I couldn’t, I can’t imagine a nonviolent solution to the terrorist attacks. I am convinced that the terrorists need to be stopped because they haven’t stopped and they will not stop, unless and until we stop them.

So, here in this autumn, this season of homecoming, this season reserved for coming back to ourselves, I found myself coming back to a me I didn’t know so well. And I found that pretty depressing. I’m always hopeful. That’s how I am, and my hope was waning.

My retired Unitarian Universalist colleague, Max Coots writes:

It was nearing mid-week when I began to recognize the arrogance of my depression. My despondency had grown out of a feeling of failure. How could we not have learned the lessons of Vietnam? How could we have missed the gargantuan folly of Grenada, the destructive inconclusivenss of Iraq, the complexities of an unraveling Yugoslavia? How could the clarion call for world peace — so bravely put forward by its champions all these decades — still be rejected and sundered by planes and bombs and the people who send them.

"When did we ever learn that life was always summertime and spring and harvest time?"

It was about mid-week when I began to realize that my depression was the result of a disillusionment that I — that we — had done all that we could to promote peace, that we had failed, and that true peace was never likely to be a very realistic goal for the world to begin with.

The question occurred to me, "What in the world ever made me think that a goal as lofty as world peace could be achieved in my lifetime?" Yes, I want peace for myself. I want peace for all of us here. But even more, I want peace for our world because it is a value that is larger than any of us. If religious principle leads us anywhere, it surely ought to lead us in the direction of world peace, and not just as a concept but as a practice.

The idea of a peaceful world as a common value didn’t even exist a century ago. Before that, peace was the defacto result of warring conflict imposed by the victor over the vanquished until someone else came along with thoughts of yet greater victory.

The idea of peace as the result of justice blessed by compassion, the idea of peace as an active verb driven by principles of mutual respect, interdependency and appreciation, is simply an idea that has not yet matured; neither in our culture nor in the world. Perhaps our thought that it should mature, that it is a cause for hope, is a prayer though, that might guide us along the way — even through times such as these, times that are wrought with great misgivings. We need not let go of our larger dreams because find ourselves currently in a nightmare.

We are not prepared for peace; we haven’t done all our homework. And so it needn’t be such a surprise to any of us that the practical steps we can see in front of us to bring an end to the horrific acts of terrorism are not peaceful steps. We don’t know peace well enough to rely on it with any degree of trust yet. But if we keep our hope alive, perhaps its day, too, will come to sprout and grow and then to blossom.

Pevna Chodron provides a Buddhist perspective in the book, When Things Fall Apart. "Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us."

There is an over-ample supply of annihilation in our world today. Perhaps we can make the best use of that annihilation by allowing it to help us strip away our illusions of grandeur or other delusions that keep us from our better selves.

That which is indestructible in us is not based on individual will, but in collective goodness. And that is something to which we can harness our individual wills. That which is indestructible within us, which lies beyond the threat of annihilation, is something that is deep and abiding. And we will need to learn to see beyond the annihilation, beyond our immediate, troubled world in order to do the work that will promote its realm…the realm of the indestructible, the realm of abiding community.

Two and a quarter centuries ago, our Universalist forbear and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, proposed that our newly forming republic create a cabinet level Office of Peace in the Constitution of the United States. His proposal was to institutionalize an ever-present voice and perspective of peace that would be a part of every major deliberation in every difficult circumstance that our country would encounter.

Had it been accepted, we would now have 225 years of experience in exploring and promoting possibilities of peace in the face of conflict and war. We would be different people now; we would be a different nation because we would have learned how to think differently. The possibilities for peace at this very moment would be far greater than the retarded efforts we have learned to make.

Perhaps in this time of immediate threat, in order to survive, we need to stay with what we know. But in the long run we need to hold ourselves to higher standards. We will need to do everything we can to institutionalize the promotion of the possibilities of the world we hope to one day create. Perhaps it is not to late to adopt an idea like Benjamin Rush’s in order to provide for a future with true common defense and genuine general welfare.

This morning we have dedicated two beautiful new babies as a part of our worship. With them we have dedicated ourselves to life’s highest ideals. Let us take that call very seriously. Let us do all that we can, so that in the end, we will have done our part, and not just for our children, but for all children. Even as there are children suffering and dying needlessly today, we can and must lay the groundwork for a better tomorrow.

Perhaps the timing is right that this new page of history has begun in the autumn. Perhaps this timing is right in the autumn when the air begins to take on a chill, when the trees blaze gloriously, fade to brown and then fall to the ground, in the autumn when we are called home to our deeper selves, to the indestructible. Perhaps in the autumn we can feel more naturally and more surely that, indeed, death will come, and so now is the time to do our finest, our best life’s work. For there is an inescapable truth to autumn, and it knows who we are.

"There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;

We must rise and follow her,

When from every hill of flame

She calls and calls each vagabond by name."

May we find our way through the many annihilations to that which abides.

May we find healing there, and a vision of wholeness that will not let us go.