LIVING FROM “YES”: The “Yes” the Universe Whispers. [1]

INTRODUCTION: The story’s told that a couple retired from up North and moved into one of the many retirement communities in our area. One morning, the husband was sitting on their lanai eating breakfast and reading the newspaper. He looked up and saw his wife hustling about their place, seemingly keeping all the appliances in the house going at one time. Feeling a warm tingle of love and appreciation towards her, he said: "Dear, I'm so proud of you." With all the appliances running, she couldn't make out what he said. She shouted back, “What did you say?" He shouted, "I'm proud of you." She snapped back, "Well, I'm tired of you, too."

            Which is to say, we human beings don’t always hear the positive phrases being shouted...the affirmations being uttered. We may not understand that loose in the cosmos is a whisper reverberating through galaxies and from planet to planet. It’s automatically translated, no matter our tongue. It’s this:

As you walk the road of life and travel down life’s highway, know that every effort great or small to do good…every bit of energy expended to go about life in a caring and responsible way…that is affirmed by the Universe. And faith, whatever the form it comes in, is about developing the sensitivity to hear it, to know it, and to believe it.

When you are smacked down, be aware that built into your DNA is a genetic capacity to stand back up again. When you suffer an outrage in which your worth as a human being is diminished, know this: there is a lock box inside of you, to which faith has the key: In that lock box, it says you are one in a million! When you feel inadequate, despondent, or incapable, there’s a script written on the tablets of your mind, that proclaims you are more than adequate and more than capable…that you are suffering only a temporary setback.

Listen up: a universal yes” has been whispered in your ear.  No one had to be humiliated by public execution…no one had to bleed to death to save you. No, you carry in you the voice of ages…eons of evolution. Species by species…one by one…over millions and millions…even billions of years, we have arrived at this good day. We stand at the portals of promise…we’re perched on the edge of infinity…awaiting the next good thing that will come our way. That’s the message of faith.

            But always remember: faith is not about changing the world, but changing the way we see the world. Sure, we’re going to have heartaches…sure we’re going to make mistakes…sure bad things are going to happen to good people. But faith is not about changing those things; rather, it’s changing our way of seeing them and if need be strengthening us in the fight to change the wrong and support the right.

Faith does not presume a theological system that starts from the premise that human beings are sinful. That is not to say that we do not make mistakes, but we are not mistakes. We fail at times, but we are not failures. And to put that in religious language, we may sin, if that means doing things that hurt others, diminish our selves, and harm the planet. But we are not by nature sinners. We start with an enormous capacity to do good, which includes accepting responsibility for our own shortcomings.

But even more important is to understand that the Universe, or in religious language, God, is not angry with individual human beings. Rather, we need only awaken to the fact that our lives are precious gifts that can be lived within an awareness of the awesomeness of our Universe. We each are constantly forgiven, time and again. Every year new life is born…species begin again…opportunities become available.

            Several years ago, I asked my niece, who at the time was employed as a highly skilled computer operator, to see if she could secure some data about a relative of ours, my great-grandfather, and her great-great-grandfather. In the process, she became hooked on genealogical research. She has traced one side of the family back to 1497, and another branch to 1717. Sometimes she was helped by records at cemeteries, death certificates at court houses, bibles, census and military records. She has printed out charts that take up a whole wall. She became fascinated by this one fact: we are connected, one to the other. And because of her hard work, our family can now trace our family tree, from generation to generation. The proof of our family’s past is there. Our footprint is visible.

We all have a history. The late Charles Hartshorne, a Unitarian Universalist philosopher contended that the same is true for the human race in this universe of ours, namely, that our world carries within itself an imprint of all that has ever happened. There is nothing that is not recorded in the memory of the universe.

His point is also one that's borne out in scientific fields as well. The footprint of human existence is recorded in our world. The universe does not know extinction, only transformation. In other words, nothing ever ceases to be; rather, it exists in another form. There is an ongoingness, a connectedness to all that is.

Which is why, that at this time of year, I think it’s always important to remind ourselves that the task of faith is not to get us to believe in make-believe, but to enable us to discover new possibilities in the reality before us. Let me say that again: The task of faith is not to get us to believe in make-believe, but to enable us to discover new possibilities in the reality before us.

We don’t know for sure what tomorrow will hold. It’s as though we’ve made a contract with the Universe, fully anticipating that contract to be honored. Except for this caveat: We’ve not been given a copy of the contract, nor is there a script to follow. We’re winging it at points. And there are some things we’re not quite sure of.

That is why we read autobiographies and fiction – especially those with happy endings. It is intrinsic to the minds of human beings to need to believe in the possibility of that which is not now, not yet real.

And so to in faith: If we listen, we can hear the whisper of the Universe…and it’s saying something very basic and simple: Yes. Yes to our dreams. Yes to our efforts to survive. Yes to the tasks before us.

Just because our dream has not yet been realized does not mean we need to cease believing in our dream. Just because our life has not gone the way we thought it would, does not mean we need to give up on ourselves.

The issue is not what can we believe in, but how do we continually renew ourselves by finding a way to believe in ourselves and the human equation.

At its best, our earthly life is like a Palm Sunday parade. We proceed with faith and great expectations. Our excitement is always going to be a little out of focus. What we bless today, we sometimes betray tomorrow. It is the cycle of human life.

But despite this, or perhaps because of this, we must take our places in the parade. We must declare, “This is it! Heaven is passing by at this moment!"

Here’s another way of saying that: I’ve misplaced my copy of the children’s book, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. But as I recall the first page, it has a little couplet that reads:

In the mud and scum of things,

Some thing always, always sings.

Finding that capacity when you’ve lost your job...believing that when you’ve lost a spouse…or your most significant relationship has ended painfully...embracing that when ill health and eroding physical ability has taken hold...that’s what faith is about. In the midst of things having gone terribly wrong, in the “muck and scum of things,” hearing something sing...always a song...always a song.

 Carl Sandburg described Abraham Lincoln as one “who saw far lights and tall rainbows.” Let us look off in the distance for that far light shining. Let us see that tall rainbow.

CONCLUSION.

At the time of my first UU settlement in Oklahoma in 1990, AIDS was devastating and scary, especially to gay men. One of the outreaches our congregation had was a group that provided services at homes to seriously ill AIDS victims. That included things like mowing the lawn, buying groceries, cleaning the house – and also a special, highly trained team that very quietly oversaw death with dignity.

And I also let the funeral homes in the area know that I was available to conduct funerals free-of-charge for AIDS victims and their families and friends. I was privileged to be called upon to do several.

One that I’ve never forgotten started with a phone call from a young man who was so emotionally distraught that for the longest he could hardly talk. When he could, he said that not only had he lost his partner to AIDS, but the church to which they belonged and which he had been reared in, had refused to let his partner’s funeral be conducted in the church because of the surviving partner’s disclosing that they were gay and his partner had died of AIDS. The young man said that his pastor had told him his partner was burning in hell at that very moment and there was no way he could have a funeral in the church. To make awful even worse, he then tried to get the young man to repent of the “sin of homosexuality.” I listened incredulously.

He went on to say that due to his partner’s illness, they had spent all their money, and he could not afford a service in the funeral home. The funeral home had given him my name and he was calling to see if I would conduct a free graveside service. I assured him that I would be honored to conduct the service at the gravesite without any charge.

After I hung up, I called my sister, Grace, told her the circumstances and asked her if she would come sing. She was teaching 8th grade English then, but without hesitation she promised to get a substitute for the afternoon and to be present.

So the next day, I drove to a little country cemetery, in Spencer, Oklahoma. This was what White people used to refer to as the “colored cemetery.” Due to Oklahoma’s racist and segregationist past, even the cemeteries had been separate until the passage of the Civil Rights Act. But now that the walls of segregation had come down, most people chose a cemetery closer to town and better maintained. Only the very poor now used this one. It had tall dead grass and red clay dirt roads. There were only three people in the funeral party, plus Gracie and me, and two persons from the funeral home. It was hot and windy, and there was only one very modest little bouquet of flowers, the very cheapest of caskets and ugly, green, artificial, plastic grass covering God’s good earth.

Knowing that the deceased and his partner were both from a fundamentalist church, I determined to preach as appropriate to their understanding as possible. I remember especially that I quoted from the words of the Apostle Paul in the Christian scriptures of the book of Romans where he wrote: "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

And I added for emphasis, “That means nothing…not preachers…not churches…not even AIDS…can separate us from the pure unbounded love of God.”

When I had finished, and without any piano or guitar, no choir or support, Grace began to sing:

"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see."

And as she sang, I promise you, the young man bereaving his partner lifted up his face. He began to stand up a little taller.  Though he had suffered a great loss, I genuinely believe that he began to realize that his partner was not burning in hell like their pastor had said. He had been enveloped in the pure unbounded love of God.

Afterward, you would have thought I was Billy Graham and Gracie was Mahalia Jackson. The partner and his friends were so effusive in their appreciation. As I prepared to leave, the bereaved young man came up to me and tried to give me a $10 bill. As he did so, he apologized and said it was all he had. I said, "No, I don't want any money." When he insisted, I realized that he needed emotionally to give something, so I explained that Gracie had to pay for a substitute that afternoon and to give it to her, which he did.

            As I began walking to my car, I heard a sound. I looked around searching for what it was. I looked back at the grave and saw the young man kneeling, rejected by his church because of the person he loved…but the sound didn’t come from him. I looked in the unkempt dead grass and tall weeds…but there was nothing there. I looked down the red clay dirt roads…and nothing there. And then I listened once more very closely, and I heard it again as clearly as a bell. It was the voice of the Universe and it was whispering, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Shalom. Salaam Aleikum.

 Amen. And blessed be.