“OUR WORLD: Building a World.”[1]

INTRODUCTION: Rabbi Harold Kushner mentions in his book, When all you ever wanted isn’t enough, the “Instant Coffee Jar Theory of Life.” Basically, his theory holds that as long as we are young and robust – namely, when the coffee jar of life is full – we really don’t worry that much about our resources. After all, life’s jar is full. Smoke, drink to excess, get a deep tan, overeat, don’t exercise, don’t worry about getting enough rest; in fact, don’t worry: because the coffee jar of life is more than half full!

            But as life’s coffee jar begins to be emptied and reaches closer and closer to the bottom, another pattern develops: each spoonful begins to be carefully measured so as to insure that as many spoons full as possible will be left. The older we get, the more we treasure what we have left. As the jar of life empties, or as we observe the jars of others emptying, then the questions of endings become more and more significant.

            You remember the story of the little boy who was intrigued by his grandmother’s constant reading of the Bible. When he asked his father why she was always doing that, his dad answered, “Son, she’s studying for Finals.”

            Many years ago, I remember watching a television special honoring Comedian George Burns on his 92^nd birthday. He sang, “I wish I was 18 again.” When he finished, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

            As we get older, there is in UU philosopher Charles Hartshorne’s words, “a perishing of occasions.” I like the delicacy of that phrasing: “a perishing of occasions.” Though age brings with it many good and positive things, it also brings an elimination of opportunities, a “perishing of occasions.” I won’t be working on my own car anymore. In fact, Joyce wanted me to put some windshield washer fluid in her car before we took it out on a trip and I couldn’t even find the hood release: That was after I read the section in the Manual on how to find the hood release. Running, not walking, in blazing heat at noontime? Those occasions have perished! Whoosh! Gone.

            We sit at the card table of life, playing our hand, but without really knowing for sure what our hand is, or what the hands of others are, or when the game of life will be over.

            Which is why I say to us here this morning, “Being on the way is a way of arriving.” We don’t have any certainty about tomorrow or the tomorrows following tomorrow. We can though make a claim of faith that this day is a gift. We will not use it by whining about the past, nor will we discount it by wishing for tomorrow. We will instead claim both it and this moment as gifts which we’ve been given. We are here. Our journey has brought us to this good day. That’s why we say that yesterday is past, and tomorrow is always before us, but the present is a present, a beautiful gift that we can live in, in this moment of time.

            One of the reasons we have trouble doing that may be that we in the West suffer from the disease of ectopia – a sort of myopic discontent. Our Western literature is full of the stories of people like Abraham, Ulysses, Dante, Bunyan, or Milton, discontents searching for contentment, the homeless by choice, who are wondering, and looking for a final, truly happy home. They were certain that the grass was greener – over yonder. There was always a better opportunity – over there. We will find utopia someday, someway, somewhere – other than here, somewhere over there. From partner and lovers, to cars and clothes, we battle constantly with the disease of ectopia – the feeling that we’re in the wrong place, at the wrong time with the wrong people. Which is why, we are constantly searching for hotter hot sauce, for louder loud music, for bigger and better everything.

            Many of the religions of the world, make it a fundamental premise of their faith that, “Yes, we are but poor pilgrims passing through this vale of tears and woe. But one day after death, we will take up permanent residence on the Elysian shores, on which and where we will spend Eternity goofing off, except for listening to the angelic choir and the harps play, forever and ever, Alleluia, Amen.”

            But life here or there is not really like that, believe me. It’s more like one of the fascinating stories to come out of World War II, a British soldier’s account of the fall of Burma. If you’ve studied that era at all, you will know that the British Navy was at one time thought to rule the seas. And Burma’s Rangoon, occupied by Great Britain, was judged to be an impregnable city because of two things: on the one hand, the British Navy had their ships guarding the sea ways, with their huge guns fixed and in place facing the sea.

            But the second thing that gave them great confidence was not only the ships guarding the ocean door. It was that behind their great fortress was the Burmese jungle. Everyone knew that it was impenetrable. It was so thick and so overgrown that no army would ever be able to traverse through it. The British knew that. And so did the rest of the world. Except for the Japanese...who hadn’t been told that they were not supposed to believe that they could do the impossible. Which they did: They penetrated the Burmese jungle. And in so doing caught the British defense systems totally unaware, and, in so doing, the Japanese won an incredibly strategic victory.

            But that’s not the point of my story. It is rather the account of one British soldier who managed to “escape” into the jungle. (Were you reading this, you would see that I have put “escape” into quotes, because the common wisdom would have been that he was jumping from the frying pan into the fire.) By escaping capture by the Japanese Army, he was trading one known bad end for a potentially worse unknown: the jungle. For all the data on the Burmese jungle were that it was a bad jungle, a terrible jungle, a jungle that would devour anyone who attempted to survive in it.

            The soldier who wrote that said he learned, however, that the Burma Jungle was something quite different: True, he had been expecting something very bad. And in his first days and nights, it was everything bad that he had heard. But then he began to discover something else: it could be very good to him. The key was, he wrote, what he made of it. Sure, there were some bad parts to it; but there were also some very good parts to it, as well. When he learned to see its potential good, he not only learned to survive off of it, but he lived to write about it.

            Which I submit is the way life is. Life is what happens when we were planning something else. But not simply that life is filled with the unexpected: Rather, life is the good that happens, when we were expecting the bad, the awful, and the terrible. Life is the good we’re living now, but may fail to recognize. Life is the now when the sun is shining and we may not even realize it.

            Some of you may have had this experience. Remember when you were in high school, and you kept thinking, “Gosh, when will I ever get my diploma?” You were constantly working for the day when you could get out of high school, or maybe it was out of college, or out of graduate school. And now when you look back, you realize: Geez Louise! Those were some of the best days I ever had! And didn’t have a clue!

            Which is why I say: Being on the way is a way of arriving. We’re here now. We’re enjoying life now. We’re together with friends and family now.

            But, what about the problems we’ve having right now? What about the disappointments we’re experiencing now? What about the difficulties of aging for example we may be going through now? What about the health issues we’re facing now?

            They can be very real. Several years ago, I met a woman at the Annual Writer’s Conference in Norman, Oklahoma at which I was speaking. We carried on a conversation for some time, and in the process I brought her a copy of psychiatrist Dr. Scott Peck’s book The road less traveled. She had just moved to Norman, Oklahoma, where I also lived. I didn’t think too much about our encounter until one Sunday morning a few weeks later, I received an anguished call from her desperately wanting help to find a pediatric physician for her three year old. Despite having only a few minutes before leaving for church, I was able to help her do that. A few days later I stopped by to visit with her. She had a genuinely compelling personal story.

            She had been a United Methodist minister’s wife living in a rural parsonage in Iowa, raising her and her husband’s two adopted children, and writing a book about marriage. In fact, the publisher and she had given her ready-to-be-published-book the title, How to have a perfect marriage. Something we all could have used at one time or another. Right?

            Anyway…her husband, in addition to being a United Methodist minister, was a graduate instructor working on a doctorate at Northwestern University. He would come home on weekends to preach at the church in Iowa and be with the family, then drive back to Evanston, Illinois, where he was finishing his doctorate and serving as a graduate instructor.

Then out of the blue for this woman writing a book on how to have a perfect marriage, the other half of that perfection announced to her that he wanted a divorce. The reason: He wanted to marry one of his students whom he had fallen head over heels in love with. And by the way: she could have full custody of their two adopted children. Adios. Farewell. And see you later. And by the way: Your book’s being published would really be an embarrassment.

            Devastated, she began desperately to try and find a job, because her loser husband, Mr. formerly-half-of the perfect marriage, no longer had a job as minister of the church, which meant he no longer had a parsonage house for her to live in – plus, he was going to be living on a graduate assistant’s income.

Fortunately, she had excellent credentials, and she found a position at the University of Oklahoma, as a graduate instructor in English, which would also help her in finishing her own doctorate. So that summer, with a U-Haul trailer, she moved out of the Methodist parsonage in rural Iowa, and with her two children came to Norman, Oklahoma. After getting a place to live, and getting somewhat established, she called the chair of the English Department at Oklahoma University, to check in, as well as to determine schedules for the coming term, etc. He said, “Oh, yes. I’ve been meaning to call you. We’ve had some budget cutbacks in our department, resulting in the elimination of your position” – even though he should have known she would by now have moved from Iowa to Oklahoma!

            Even worse, she had also learned from the pediatrician I had recommended that her daughter had a genetic kidney disorder, which the other daughter, both adopted from the same parents, most likely had as well.

            And her book on how to have a perfect marriage? She was in a financial dispute with the publisher about the advance they had given her.

            I listened to all of this as empathically as possible, when she looked at me quite intently, reached over and got Dr. Peck’s book which I had loaned her and handed it back to me saying, “Wayne, I only read the first line of The road less traveled. It said, ‘Life is difficult.’ Believe me! I don’t have to read his book to know that.”

            I’m sure that many of us know something of that feeling: When it rains it pours. Sometimes, if it weren’t for bad luck, we wouldn’t have any luck at all.

            Many of you have had some really difficult times. And to offer trite bromides and platitudes would diminish the truly powerful personal discoveries and choices you’ve made in the face of overwhelming odds.

For some of us, one of our other favorite texts is another psychiatrist’s text, Man’s Search for Meaning. In it, Dr. Viktor Frankl charts out the dehumanizing journey that so many of the concentration camp victims had to follow. They had lost their homes, their jobs, their families, their nationalities, their civil rights, their professional titles, their hobbies, their freedom of movement, their right to read books, their right to worship, their right to read the newspaper or listen to the radio, their right to plan their future, their right to medical treatment, their right to live where they chose, their right to marriage, their right to a relationship, to have sex and to procreate, their right to vote, their right to buy and sell, their right to use money in exchange for the purchase of goods, the right to purchase transportation, and countless other freedoms, the right to wear the clothes they chose and live where they wished. In fact, name almost any right and they had lost it, except for one. And it was this: The right to choose how they would respond to any one of this catalog of losses.

And that’s what faith is about today. It says we have the right and the choice to be a person of faith regardless of what yesterday imposed upon us, or what tomorrow may bring. So, how do we build a better world?

CONCLUSION.

Here are two examples:

We build a better world by building a better us. Joyce and I spent some time this summer in Sedona, Arizona, with some wonderful people devoted to finding regular ways to practice the things that lead to better spiritual practices and to us being better people. We were so excited by some of the things we did and the lessons we had. We have the DVDs and the CDs. We were so ambitious and determined to share them with you when we got back. We get home and we’ve not only not listened to them, I’m not sure we can even find them now. Hopefully, this next week! But make no mistake: Building a better world, starts with us. It’s an inside job!

And when we build a better us, a better you and me, we are able then also, to build better communities. Here’s an example of that:

I don’t know how many of you have access to the Internet or have looked at the e-mail that Ed Kleinow sent out last Tuesday evening. As you know, thanks to Craig Heller and friends – mostly Craig,  we started back in late April or May to replace the deck in the back, and then learned that the City of Ft. Myers requires a permit to do that. In fact, they nailed a “Stop work” order on the deck in case we missed that point. So this past Tuesday afternoon, Ed and I went down for what we anticipated being a brief meeting with the Board of Adjustment for approval of our request to rebuild/replace the deck, which had really fallen into serious disrepair before we started our work.

It so happens that there were some unexpected questions raised by two of our neighbors, one by e-mail and one in person, resulting in almost two hours of hearings on our issue alone. Our request was eventually approved with only slight modifications about the actual times we use it. But that’s not my point: The real point is that the Board of Adjustment is comprised of citizens just like you and me who volunteer their time and energy to making sure their community is not encroached upon by bad planning. There were six or seven of them. And one of them voted no and the others voted yes: volunteers all. Craig, our volunteer, who is in Spain at the moment, volunteered his time to build much of the deck for the congregation; he wrote an e-mail that he will return in a week or so and will be finishing the deck upon his return. That and the Board of Adjustment is one of the teeny tiny ways we build a better world. Volunteers doing their part.

Shalom, Salaam Aleikum, Amen, and Blessed Be.