Sermon: ACCEPTING LOSS AS A UNVERSAL FORCE

Some of you will remember this past summer when our minister Josh Pawelek returned from his vacation and shared his thoughts about hermit crabs and democratizing mysticism and his son's experiences on the beach. I left that Sunday service with the vision of his 3 year old son Mason shouting, "NO! Go back water!" as the ocean tides came to wash his sand castles away. Accept loss as a universal force. How early in life we have opportunities to begin to learn this lesson. In that sermon, Rev Josh also warned us he would be encouraging us to begin to articulate and share our personal theologies and as I began to integrate his continuing talks about UUism and theology I began to realize how much of my own personal beliefs have been shaped by my experiences of loss and grief.

Candy Lightner, who founded the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving after her 13 year old daughter was killed by a drunk driver writes: "The price of life is loss. From the moment of birth when we leave the womb forever, we face loss in many ways. We move and never see our childhood home again; friendships fade; we may lose money, possessions, hope; we change jobs; we graduate; we marry and divorce. Every change, desired or not, large or small, involves loss. Losses shape our lives."

One of the primary ways that loss seems to shapes our lives is in how we make sense (or don't ) of those losses. We can fight and resist and deny or we can face and come to terms with life as it is. Finding meaning in our losses can lead to powerful personal transformation but in order to find that meaning, we must first come to accept our loss. If it is true, as Ms. Lightner says, that "losses shape our lives" the affirmative part of that truth is that we have some say-so as to what that shape will be. This for me, this is where personal theology comes in.

The post card that says: "Accept loss as a universal force" has been with me for many years. It was given to me by a dear friend after I had been diagnosed with cancer and my marriage was breaking up and I thought I would die from the grief and fear and pain that I felt. ACCEPT LOSS AS A UNIVERSAL FORCE. This simple reminder that in accepting life we must accept loss and that might include the loss of my own life, helped me through that time, which became for me, a period of intense spiritual exploration and growth. I found myself questioning, once again, all that I believed in and wondering who exactly I was and who I would become as I passed through this experience.

There is an old folk saying that says "That which does not kill you makes you stronger." This saying simplifies things a lot as folks sayings tend to do, but sayings become "sayings" for a reason. I have found a great deal of truth in the concept that surviving the intense pain of loss and change and in choosing life, whatever that life is at any given moment, I can and do become much stronger. Because of the way in which a particular person, now gone, touched me; or because of the way in which a particular set of events or circumstances, difficult as they may have been, presented themselves to me, I now have an understanding of myself that I didn't have before, and I have some things to offer to others that I didn't have before. But if I want this growth, I must choose to face my pain and accept my losses. I must stop standing and saying "NO!" as the inevitable tides of life come to change the landscape of my world.

Sadly, we live in a culture that tells us regularly that we should be feeling happy all of the time and that we will likely gain that happiness through consuming and through better chemical living. Loss and pain are hard and because we have such trouble tolerating our own feelings, so many turn to behaviors and substances to help deny and mask the feelings of fear or pain when we experience loss. A child cries at his first haircut and he is promised a cookie to be a "good boy." Liquor flows at most funeral gatherings. We shop, eat, watch TV, over exercise… anything not feel the pain. But what I have come to know, one of the spiritual lessons I have learned, is that in the loss, the pain, in going through the grief, it is there I will find the moments of mysticism, a connection with all there is, that is more valuable than gold.

When I was 4 years old, my 11 month old sister died and this was my first experience with loss. Although I don't remember feeling much about losing my baby sister and I went many years without even thinking about her, what I do remember is that losing my sister also led to the loss of my mother. I don't think my mom ever did quite recover but she was advised to "get on with life" so she quickly had another child and did her best to parent us. She was often absent, both physically and emotionally and I followed her lead and learned to put on a happy face. In his poem "The Well of Grief" David Whyte says:

Those who will not slip beneath the still surface
Of the well of grief
Turning down through its black water
To the place we cannot breathe
Will never know the source from which we drink
The secret water cold and clear
Nor find in the darkness shimmering
The small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else

It was many years before I came to understand that it was my mother's unwillingness to "slip beneath the still surface of the well of grief" that created a huge disconnect for her and that she never did grieve and accept the loss of her child.

I, too, spent a good deal of my life throwing those "small round coins" back into the well, wishing for something other than what was. I denied my losses, my pain and my grief and in that place I, too, was deeply disconnected from myself and others. Because my Mom had been so emotionally unavailable to me, due to her own pain and loss, I learned very early on to be extremely self reliant. Like the lyrics of the Beatles song says:

"When I was younger so much younger than today
I never needed anybody's help in any way"

But when I faced that dark night of the soul, that time when I thought I would die from the fear of my marriage, my health, and perhaps of my life, I found that I couldn't avoid the pain and that I couldn't face it alone. I did "change my mind and opened up the door." I allowed myself to slip beneath the still surface of the well of grief and I did "come know the source from which we drink" and that discovery led to deep personal transformation. In crying "HELP!" and finding that help was there, in so many forms, I slowly began to accept loss as a universal force and to understand how important it is to have loving support in my life.

In those moments of deep fear and grief I not only turned to the people in my life who were willing and able to support me, but I also found that in the dark of night, when it was too late to call a friend, my cry of "Help me!" was answered in a mystical way. No, God didn't appear in a burning bush at the bottom of my bed, nor did a soft white light envelope me. In fact, none of the classic deity visitation stories that I've read so avidly over the years occurred, but what did happen is that I came to feel a deep connection with all the suffering in the world and in those moments I also found a connection to all of the joy. Something numenous and deeply spiritual happened when I let go into my pain and fear and loneliness and I understood that whatever that source was at the bottom of the well of grief, was available to me and deeply nourishing. I had discovered what Rumi was talking about in the poem I read earlier when he says:
"This longing you express IS the return message. The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union. Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup."

If loss is indeed a universal force and something we all experience to varying degrees throughout our lives, than loss also affirms the interconnected web of life, which UUs so strongly believe in. But because UUs don't have any particular dogma that offers us the promise of an afterlife or an organized concept of a God that may have some mysterious reason for allowing our suffering, it seems that we may be challenged in finding and articulating a personal theology that might help and support us through the times of grief and loss in our lives. Certainly, because we believe in the interconnected web of life, I think most UUs would agree in the power of support and love from other people, but what of theology?

Last week Rev. Josh talked about the definition of theology. The simplest definition I could find is: Theology is the study of the nature of God. Josh suggested another definition that is more inclusive: "the attempt to articulate that which is ultimately reliable." Either way, this is something I feel I have been attempting to do ever since I was a young child asking "WHY" about everything. In the first service I presented here at UUSE I shared with many of you what I thought the meaning of "spirituality" was and my own personal journey from theism to atheism to agnosticism and finally to what I call gnosticism: a knowing. I remember, as I wrote that talk, feeling nervous and worried about offending people. I was and still am, so aware of the wide differences in personal theology that exist in this congregation and in that summer Sunday service when Josh spoke about how he is curious to explore why we don't articulate and share more about what it is we do believe, my first thought was that we want to avoid conflict. Perhaps that was just my own projection, but I do remember feeling uncomfortable and looking for language that wouldn't offend anyone when I was speaking about my beliefs concerning God. Today, I am eternally grateful for the UU principle that supports the individual's search for truth and meaning for it is in this principle where we will hopefully find the freedom to share what we believe with each other even if the language we use to describe our thoughts and experiences doesn't match one another's.

It is clearly a piece of my personal theology that God, or spirit, or inner strength or whatever we choose to call that thing that does connect us all is a deep, rich and available source and is ultimately reliable. In fact, sad as it seems, I have often found that loss and grief are necessary to allow me to contact that source even though I believe it is always there for me to draw from. It seems that for me, when I allow myself to really feel the desperate pain of deep grief and loss it renders my intellectualizing useless. The words and names and reasons, the why's and wherefores that Rev Josh spoke of weeks ago, that so often block my connection to the divine, they all fall away and I am IN the mystical experience. Whether we find it walking in nature, reading poetry, talking with or listening to another person, or crying alone in the dead of night, being love dogs howling out our pain and grief, I have found great comfort in knowing that I am never really alone. We are never really alone. Together we watch the tides wash away our castles and together we build new ones. Let us be willing to cry out for help and be willing to dive into that well of grief and in doing so may we find that source from which we can nourish and sustain ourselves.

Amen and Blessed Be.