Sermon

INTRODUCTION: In Shel Silverstein's book, The Missing Piece, a circle sets out to find the pie-shaped wedge of itself that is missing. (Imagine a pie with one slice missing, rolling along, looking for its missing part.) The circle, with the piece missing, searches everywhere. It finds a whole lot of different pieces that were lost, but none fits the circle. There’s one that’s too big…there’s one that’s too little…there’s one that over-advertises its availability…but none of them exactly fit the empty hole in the circle.

As the circle with the piece missing bumps along, it realizes it cannot travel as fast as it used to when it was a whole and did not have a missing piece. Because of this, it has to go slower.

After days of searching, the circle finally finds its missing piece and gets back together – right back where it started from.

But then, guess what? After awhile, the circle lets go of the slice that once was missing. Why would it do a thing like that? The answer: It discovers that going slower enabled it to see and enjoy more along the way. It realizes that there was a lot it had been missing when it was going so fast as a whole circle. Although it had to go slower with a missing piece, the circle was better able to see the world around it.

Which was Shel Silverstein’s way of saying: Losing something can be bad, sometimes very bad – but what we do after we’ve lost it can be good, very good.

Or he might be saying that slowing down to smell the roses, is good advice no matter what age or place in life you are.

That’s a lesson that I’ve been trying to learn. Since going to the Southern Dharma Retreat Center in Hot Springs, N. Carolina, Joyce Schaffer and I have been trying each morning to spend at least 10 minutes in mindfulness meditation. When first we started, ten minutes seemed like a lot of time; now it seems so short. But the purpose is to help us be mindful of wherever we are and whatever we are doing, to be mindful of all those who have contributed to the blessings we enjoy every day. To be mindful of those who contributed the food we eat…to those who paved the streets on which we drive…to the taxes that fund our police, commissioners, our airport.

Several years ago, George Gerbner, then the dean of the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, founded the Cultural Indicators Research Project. As a result of his research, he reached some very insightful conclusions. One was that people who watch excessive amounts of television are more likely to believe that the world is an unforgiving and frightening place. From these data, he coined the phrase, “mean world syndrome,” to describe that kind of belief. He also wrote this:

“Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures…. They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve them of their insecurities.”

Which explains the phenomenon of people wanting a “strong leader,” even if, he breaks the law, or takes away their freedoms. At least they don’t feel insecure. Which is certainly not very assuring, giving the upcoming elections….

So what should we do about fear? One of the most famous quotations of all time about fear came from President Franklin Roosevelt as he took office for his first term in March 1933. The economy had tanked, people were starving, and fear of the future was rampant. In that most famous of his speeches, President Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

I’ve always liked that quotation, but to be honest with you, I also couldn’t explain what he meant, had I been asked. What does it mean to say, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

To find out, I went back to read that Inaugural Address, and I must admit I was genuinely impressed. It almost read like a sermon for the national spirit. When I finished it, I realized that what that famous quotation means is this:

Which is another way of saying that fear-mongering is self-sustaining. It multiplies and regenerates so that it enervates one’s vision and energy and reduces us to puddles of helplessness. Or worse, according to George Gerbner: It creates a society in which leaders can rule by the use of fear, and the constant specter of uncertainty, which we certainly saw with 9-11. Using the fear of Al Qaeda, America has brought havoc and destruction to Iraq and Afghanistan. We killed Osama bin Laden, but we’re thinking like little children if we believe that he was only about 9-11. His goals were much more global, especially related to Western economies. He succeeded beyond his wildest hopes. We entered two wars with credit from China. And Wall Street greed delivered a permanent blow to our financial strength.

Now America and the nations of the West are living with a degree of uncertainty we had never known. But when we think of the globe, living with uncertainty is probably one of the oldest social problems humankind has faced. Can you imagine what it was like ten thousand years ago, to face the uncertainties of life? Our species knew so much less about the physical and social world than we do today. Uncertainty was the routine of daily living. Our ancestors could not predict what would happen in their world. Survival was a hope of the moment, not the future. They were unsure how soon, and in what form, they would be facing deadly enemies – animal or human. Fear of the unknown ruled.

So how much different are we today from our ancestors? Of course, our population has exploded with huge implications for every facet of life. From 1750 to the present, the population has tripled. Technology has transformed our world as well. And our understanding of our world and universe has made a tremendous difference in how we approach life and living.

But Saturday, the New York Times carried an article stating that the evergreens in Montana’s forests are not staying green. The pine trees of the northern and central Rockies are dying. And from the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires are racing across parched landscapes, burning millions of acres. In Colorado, at least 15% of their beautiful aspens have gone into decline because of lack of water.

But it’s not just here: The devastation is worldwide. The giant euphoria trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires and dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing to a heat blast in Australia. And believe it or not, the Amazon recently suffered, two “once a century” droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.

But even more scary: Scientists are explaining that trees have been absorbing the emissions from all the world’s cars and trucks. But they have only restrained it, not halted it.

And when trees die as I recited, when they burn up they spew huge amounts of carbon dioxide back in to the air as is already happening. Which in turn speeds up the warming of the planet, and unlocking more carbon once stored in very cold places like the Arctic.

Then listen to Governor Rick Perry of Texas in the Republican presidential debate, when he says that science on human caused global warming is “unsettled.” Can you imagine? It’s about as unsettled as believing that there’s a deity in heaven managing the weather and humankind’s destinies – saving this one, and zapping that one.

But I would like to suggest that there is another level of discourse about our place in the Cosmos. It’s found in response to what Winifred Gallagher means when she says, “I’m a neo-agnostic.” She defines that “as a well-educated skeptic who has inexplicable spiritual feelings.” She says, “Something important keeps eluding her most trusted tools of learning and intellect.”

Since Darwin, since Einstein, since the 19^th and 20^th centuries, since the awareness of the Big Bang, we’ve begun to discover that the world of which we are a part is a marvelous and awesome place. To address that world and that mystery is a totally different matter. Which is why Dr. Gallagher says she is a “neo-agnostic.” She’s not puzzled at all by the notion of some super god controlling the universe like some cosmic puppet-master manipulating our lives. That notion of God is as dead as the dodo bird.

But something else has changed the playing field: relativity, the new physics, and a whole host of advances in understanding our bodies, our planet and our Universe have taken place. We’ve realized that the world is not reducible to neat logical packaging. There is a relativity to it, a universal evolution, a constantly changing cosmic scenario, that is awesome beyond description.

And as Einstein declared, there is a wondrous mystery to it as well. So much so, that very few would presume to dismiss the Universe as a mere set of physical phenomena.

Personally, I believe we all are created with what Santayana called animal faith…which is an innate confidence in the created order. It’s intrinsic to who we are. It’s not a matter of believing or not believing. It’s a matter of awareness of what is already there, and acknowledging the depth of what is within every one of us.

What the religions of the world attempt to do for us is to articulate that inner faith and confidence…to provide the poetry of creeds, the beauty of scripture, and the power of myth and story.

The language of faith says, “I’m a well-educated skeptic who has inexplicable spiritual feelings. Something important keeps eluding my most trusted tools of learning and intellect.”

But as the little story of The Missing Piece informs us, it’s okay to be missing a part. It’s okay not to have it all together. It’s okay not to know exactly what we believe. Or as Rabbi Harold Kushner puts it:

"Sometimes we are more whole when we are incomplete, when we are missing something. There is a wholeness about those persons who can give themselves away, who can give their time, their money, their strength, to others and not feel diminished. There is a wholeness about those who have come to terms with their limitations. There is a wholeness about the woman or man who has learned that she or he is strong enough to go through a tragedy and survive, the person who can lose someone through death, through divorce, through estrangement, and serious illness, and still feel like a complete person."

Last Wednesday night, Joyce Schaffer and I were honored with an invitation from Rabbi Jeremy Barres to attend the opening night of the High Holy Days at Temple Beth El. Hank Schapiro and Elaine Cusic accompanied us. It was beautiful and the Cantor was the best I’ve ever heard. And it was especially great to listen and celebrate the history of the Jewish people.

It also made me more appreciative of our history as a species. We are intimately related to every living thing that creeps, crawls or flies, to every living thing that is rooted in the earth and reaches for the sun, to every living thing that inhabits the dark depths of the oceans. We are but one form which life has taken.

The heat of our bodies is the heat of stars, tempered to the uses of life. The salt in our blood and in our tears is the salt of ancient oceans, encapsulated and carried with us, generation upon generation, into strange and distant places and circumstances. The past is not dead. It lives in us even now. The evolutionary universe, the ancient environment, the emergence of complex life—all are recapitulated in every moment of our existence.

PASTORAL PRAYER: Friday, I went to visit David Morgan, a member of this congregation, who has in the past been involved with several significant ventures, including service on the Board of Governors. Now he’s facing a very critical time after an initial bout with lung cancer, and the subsequent surgery, radiation and chemotherapy that followed. As happens sometimes with lung cancer, it returned and it’s shutting down his capacity to breathe. He told me that his physician said at best he had six months. And just this past week, oxygen was brought out.

Dave being Dave, I learned that he and Pat had gone through all of the recommended “End of Life” directives. And he even had his memorial service sketched out for me to look at. And do you know what was the very last thing he had listed in his service? He wants Darlene Mitchell to sing, “What a wonderful world.”

He told me that he had read all of my sermons, some as many as 100 times. He thanked me for them. As I went to leave, I shook his hand, told him how much we appreciated him and what he had done. And if he needed me, he had only to call. This “Pastoral Prayer” is offered with Dave in mind:

We are part of a world that is alive…everywhere seeking to incarnate the evolutionary process that called us into being... that transforms us as we cannot transform ourselves…that receives us back to itself when life has used us up. Not knowing the end of that process, nonetheless we trust it, we rest in it, and we serve in it. Amen.

[1] A sermon presented on October 02, 2011, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, 2756 McGregor Blvd., Ft. Myers, FL by the Rev. Dr. Wayne A. Robinson, minister.