Sermon

INTRODUCTION: I’m told that one of President Ronald Reagan's favorite stories concerned a young farm girl. On her 12th birthday, she jumped up before dawn and ran out to the barn.

As a present for her birthday, she had asked her parents for a pony. She was sure that it would be there. She flung open the barn door, but in the dim light, could see no pony – only some mounds of horse manure. But, being an optimist she declared, "With all this manure around, there must be a pony in here somewhere."

I say to you today, no matter how much disappointing stuff is piled up in your life so that you can not see your dreams and hopes any longer, let me make you a promise: There is a pony in there. Despite all that’s happened, and may still happen, don’t give up hope, don’t stop anticipating the next moment, don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

Because the greatest gift we have is not the past…it’s not the future. Life’s greatest gift is this very moment of time that we now have, to hold and embrace.

A few years back, I took a test on the Internet. It was a fairly intricate exam that required you to enter all kinds of data about your parents, grandparents, siblings, your health and eating habits, weight, exercise, sleep patterns, and a lot more. When finished, it promised to give you a fairly accurate prediction of how long you could expect to live.

I entered everything asked for: parents lived to 90s, no history of heart disease, not overweight, exercised regularly, ate healthy, took an aspirin a day and had been on anti-cholesterol pills for two years. Finally I had all the questions filled out. The answer to my life expectancy? I was going to live at least until I was 104.

Now I’m not sure I want to live to 104, but it was an affirming bit of data. A few short months later, I’m lying on a gurney in the hospital emergency room and I hear a physician saying, “He’s having an MI,” which I learned later is doctor talk for a myocardial infarction. When I asked the nurse what an MI was, he said, “You’re having a heart attack.” Not only that, I was going to have a triple bypass.

I wanted to say, Oops. Time-out, guys. I just took an Internet test. I’m living until 104. Your machines are messed up. Better call Jim Nathan to come back and straighten everything out.

And to add to the indignity of it, after the procedure was finished and I regained consciousness, the nurse says, “You’re going to be a little sore up here because we had difficulty getting you to respond to the paddles.”

Say what? “Oh, yes,” she went on, “We had a difficult time getting your heart to start beating again and had to use the paddles an unusual number of time.”

They still didn’t get it. I wasn’t supposed to be there. It was heartburn and I was living to 104!

Later, when I was in the cardio-intensive care unit, my chest had been sawed open, my arms were filled with needles and bandages, a mask was over my face and a tube down my throat. There were lights flashing and funny sounds and constant beeping. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t move, and like Jesus, I had just been resurrected from the dead.

I thought, it sort of, kind of, maybe, pretty nearly, almost, looks like I’m going to miss out on that 40 years more or so the Internet promised. But you know what: the overpowering feeling I had was not loss, but incredibly, thanksgiving. What a life I had been privileged to live, filled with love and hope, nourished by the most incredible family members, plus a couple of real losers, who gave variety to the mix.

And I knew that if it ended right there, there was nothing unfinished. Everyone who mattered knew I loved them, because I had told them time and again. And I had invested my last years of ministry in the most incredible group of people with whom we founded this congregation. That summer, I had shot a 76 and a 78 in golf. I mean, what else could there be?

Guess what made it even better? They gave my heart some veins from my left leg and my left arm, and said they are good for at least another 20 years (I didn’t tell them about my 104 prediction.) But if not, I already knew: life is a gift with a capital “G.”

And it’s not because of the past or because of the limits of the future: It’s because of the incredible now, this moment. In fact, of all of life’s pleasures…of all of life’s most meaningful experiences…there is none more so than this one right here. I deeply believe that, right now, here today, as I’m preaching to you.

It’s not because I’m an actor who likes to perform. Certainly, there has to be some of that to want to do what I do every week. But what really makes it such a fulfilling challenge is because when I stand up here, I know about so many of you. I know what you are going through. You’ve shared about your children, your job, your emotional and physical health, your age, your home, your financial situation, your thoughts about life and death.

Sometimes when I listen in on the game of life, I want to blow the whistle as a referee of life and shout, “Time out. This isn’t fair. This should not be happening to her or him. Let’s look at the replay and find out what is going on.”

But I can’t do that; instead I am given the awesome privilege to share with people whom I’ve come to admire so much, a little bit about what we already know, what we already share, and what we already believe. It’s why we come together week after week. I just get to add the punctuation, the underlining, the bold-face, and to put things in quotation marks.

And now and then, I get to say what I’m saying today, “Let’s don’t forget to add thanks, even though a lot of things have gone down the tubes. Let’s don’t forget how wonderful, how marvelous life and friends and work and Florida and love and hope and inspiration and music and sunshine and golf and tennis and reading and television and school and the New York Times and NPR and the Lehrer Hour, and the Internet and family and All Faiths and getting together on Thanksgiving Sunday, really are. Wow!”

But there’s another group of you I know about as well. You really screwed up, big time. You made choices that were plain old wrong. Despite how much you want to blame it on somebody else, no. When push comes to shove, it was you.

And how do I know that? Because I’ve been there. Done that. And got the t-shirt. See all these people here. They’ve been there too.

Because All Faiths is not only a sanctuary for saints, it’s also a hospital for sinners. But our census changes from week to week. One week there are saints in nearly every seat on this side. Next week, jeeminey Christmas: what a bunch of sinners on this side. Next week all the saints here are over here. Next week only sinners over here.

Put another way, we all make mistakes, but we are not mistakes. And now and then, in the clear light of day, we do some things that even we find hard to believe we did.

That’s why first and foremost, faith is about forgiveness…about starting over…about getting up and beginning again.

That’s not to say there are not some things worse than others. There are indeed. I still remember a priest telling me one time that listening to the confession of nuns was like being stoned to death with popcorn. Other times, the failures and wrong choices we humans can make takes one’s breath away. How could that ever have happened?

But if there is anything about which to be thankful for at this time of year, it is this: thankfulness for a forgiving Universe, a forgiving family, a forgiving partner, spouse, friend or love. We probably didn’t deserve it, but forgiveness was given anyway, and it’s always something to be immensely thankful for.

Now since this is an interfaith congregation, I think the final question of Thanksgiving is this:

CAN WE GIVE THANKS

In 1971, scientist and astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, as some of you may recall, was a part of the Apollo 14 Space mission that walked on the moon. But ever since, he has let us know that the walk was not the most important thing that happened to him. Rather, it was that from that rarified viewpoint, he was “overwhelmed by a powerful sense of the unity of everything in creation. The separation among spirit, mind and matter was dissolved.”

It was a life-altering, hit-on-the-head moment, in which he knew at the very deepest levels of knowing, something quite rare and wonderful. He realized for the first time that:

…the molecules of my body, of this spacecraft, of the world I had come from and was returning to, they were all manufactured in the furnace of an ancient generation of stars like those surrounding us. Our presence here was not an accident of nature, but rather an extension of the same universal process that evolved our molecules. And I felt an extraordinary personal connectedness with it. I experienced an ecstasy of unity. I not only saw the connectedness, I felt it.

Now I can imagine that if you and I were to think about it for awhile, we would say that had we had the experience of walking on the moon, we would have been greatly impacted by it, too. But what is significant about Dr. Mitchell’s experience is that he interpreted the impact of it in both religious and scientific language…he knew “that our presence here was not an accident of nature, but rather an extension of the same universal process that evolved our molecules.” And more excitingly: He felt connected to it.

But can that be part of our experience? To address that, let me ask you these questions: How do birds “know” when to head south or return north? How do salmon “know” when it’s time to swim upstream to mate? How do plants “know” in the morning to turn toward the sun? How does a bear “know” when to hibernate? Whence comes that innate sense of “knowing?”

And are those kinds of knowing reserved only for animals, birds, fish and plants? Or do we humans also have an inner sense of knowing. Do we have an inner awareness that we exist…that we’re here…on this planet…that we are connected to life and reality? Is there within each of us an unarticulated sense of being and belonging with which we’re born…that we know we belong here. Do we know that we are a part of all that is…that this planet is ours…that we’re naturalized citizens of the Universe, c/o Planet Earth. We know!

I suggest that sense of knowing is innate and existential to us. It’s not unique to our species, but to all species. Every species is born with that sense of knowing: They belong. Lions, and tigers, giraffes and elephants, spiders and rats, snakes and ostriches – they all have an innate sense of knowing that this is their home and they belong. They know that.

But there is another kind of knowing, perhaps, that makes one significant difference between our species and others. It’s this: We are aware that we know. We are able to reflect on our existence. We are conscious of the gift of being a species on Planet Earth, on one of the planets in this solar system, which is a part of the Milky Way Galaxy, and the Universe. We can be self-reflective about that. We can know that we know.

Now here’s the leap I want to make: Was Astronaut Mitchell’s experience only for those who have that most rarefied of opportunities – to walk on the moon? Or did he experience what the Buddha experienced under the bodhi tree? Was Dr. Mitchell’s experience related only to space travel, or did it happen to Muhammad in the deserts of Saudi Arabia? Is it necessary to be an astronaut to experience that sense of connectedness to all that is, or did Jesus grasp it? Is it necessary to be above the earth to feel connected to God, or can we experience it in the same way that Moses did in the deserts of Egypt, and as the prophets of Israel did in the caves and outposts of the ancient nation of Israel?

If so, then that means it’s available to us. If not, then it means only astronauts who’ve walked on the moon can know and possess that deepest sense of inner awareness.

However, I believe more than ever that that sense of connectedness is not unique to astronauts. Nor is it unique to Muhammad, to Buddha, Jesus or Moses. It is available to us, here, today. Which is what church, synagogue, and mosque are all about, namely, how do we connect with that which connects everything that is? How do we access the Source of all Consciousness?

I believe that what the religions of the world are about is to re-present this reflective sense of “knowing that we know.” They do it through the writings and stories of prophets, teachers, sacred scripture, liturgy and rituals of all kinds. It is an articulation of what the bird knows, what the salmon knows, what the bear knows, what the plant knows, and what you and I know in the deepest deep of our inner selves. We know, and because we know we are able to reflect on what it means to know and to change our lives from only instinctual practices.

Further, there is a distinct benefit that comes from living in the awareness of the giftedness and connectedness of life and nature. There are spiritual accruals that come from investing in the practices that encourage and tap into the sense of Oneness with all that is.

I also think there is something about thanksgiving…about giving thanks…that is more than words. It ties us to our most basic roots.

One of the reasons I believe that’s so is that giving thanks takes us out of our selves and directs us toward others. The very act of saying thanks, of expressing gratitude, moves us from a self-focus to an other-focus. Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”

This time of year is one of those rare and wonderful holidays when the only thing we’re asked to give is something very simple: thanks. So I encourage you this holiday season, give thanks. And thanks to each of you for being here this morning.

[1] Given November 19, 2006, Thanksgiving Sunday, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, Ft. Myers, Florida, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1901 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister: final in a three-part “Patriotic Series.”