Our lives are like this. We turn the hourglass over again and again and again. Maybe you turned it over when you chose to pursue a second career. Maybe you turned it over when you chose divorce, or when you chose marriage a second time. Maybe it was choosing a new spiritual practice or a new congregation. For how many of us was coming to this congregation like turning over the hourglass. "I think I'll try that Unitarian Universalist congregation in Manchester. I think I'll give religion and spirituality a second chance." What about coming back from illness, finding the cancer's gone into remission-a second chance at life after living with the prospect of death? Or perhaps the cancer is back, and new choices confront you. What about coming out of the closet as gay or lesbian or transgender? You may have turned it over when you finally realized you needed to recover from drug or alcohol addiction. It may have been the moment you realized you were finally in recovery from mental illness, or finally able to live with the pain of a terrible loss, or finally able to forgive someone who hurt you, or finally able to accept forgiveness from someone you hurt. Many of you turned over that hourglass when the kids finally left home. We turn it over all the time. We get second chances. We get the opportunity to learn from our mistakes, to re-invent ourselves-all of us, everyone. We don't always take the opportunity when it comes. Sometimes it's difficult, it requires struggle. Sometimes it's easy and very natural.

I like to think Unitarian Universalism is the kind of religion that makes it very easy to turn over the hourglass. Perhaps not in all cases, but certainly in some. Take the example of the couple who comes to me to get married. One of the partners acknowledges: "I've been married before. I got a divorce." This is important information to me, but not for the reason the person is telling it to me. They want to know what religious hoop they have to jump through in order for me to marry them. What prayer must they pray? What sin must they confess? What do they have to do to finally turn over the hourglass and start again? What a relief when they learn all I want to know is whether or not they've healed from the pain of that divorce, and whether or not they are truly in love with this new person they wish to marry. You can see the sand begin flowing anew in their lives. We can't erase the past; and for the sake of our health and wholeness, it's better not to. But we do get second chances in many facets of our lives, and it's worth taking them when the opportunity comes. In fact, it may be that knowing when to turn over the hourglass is the essence of a well-lived life.

One of the first sermons I ever preached in this pulpit was in anticipation of this time of year, the time of Samhain and All Souls-Samhain being one of many ancient folk or Pagan traditions around the world, occurring at the end of the harvest season, used to honor and commune with the ancestors, often linked to Halloween in our culture; All Souls being the later Christian version of this tradition, a time to celebrate the saints, the pious individuals who've gone before. We often hear of Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. This is the time of year when the veil between our world and the world of the ancestors is said to be thin. I have always felt that in Unitarian Universalist congregations this is a very appropriate time of year to contemplate not only the ancestors, but death and dying. In that sermon I quoted a Unitarian Universalist minister, the Rev. Forrester Church, a wonderful and simple quote about the nature of religion. He writes: "Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die."¹

I make reference to this sermon and this quote because there comes a point in our lives when we can no longer turn over the hourglass. As much as we've had second chances, as much as we've been able to re-invent ourselves, we've always been up against the reality of physical death. That sand has been flowing and flowing and flowing. While there are ways to live that prolong life, if we're careful and lucky, there is no way to live that prevents death.

I'm not sure what Anna Nalick was thinking when she wrote the song "Breathe (2:00 AM)". I know she wasn't yet twenty years old when she wrote it, which is impressive to me as one whose first career-before I turned over that hourglass-involved writing songs. I love her images. They name life's relentless flow. "You can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable; life's like an hourglass glued to the table; no one can find the rewind button now." For me, in this season, these images speak to the dual reality of being alive and having to die. There's much we can do with our lives. We're cars on the track. The sand is flowing. The tape is playing. And as much as I love my little nephew's hourglass game, and as much as I plan to continue playing it as long as he wants to, there's a deeper, more difficult truth. We can't erase what's gone before. We can't stop life's progression. We can't, in any ultimate sense, turn the hourglass over. The sand of our individual, physical, human lives will stop flowing.

Some religions respond to this dual reality by preaching that one's faith will overcome death. Death doesn't matter because you will achieve eternal life through right belief. I can't agree with this. This idea doesn't take death seriously enough. It literally attempts to minimize the impact death has on our lives. It overlooks death, makes death an afterthought. Why is that a problem? I believe the less seriously we take our dying, the less seriously we take our living. If it's all about what happens after death, then what happens in this life seems to matter less, except of course, having the right beliefs. Two weeks ago I spoke about belief as longing. Our beliefs are indications of what we long to be true. Well, I long for this life to matter; and this life-which as far as I know is the only life I have to live-matters most to me when I take my death seriously, when I embrace the reality of my death rather than fleeing from it.

There is an ironic similarity between religions promising eternal life, and consumer advertising promising eternal youth. People of the first world yearly spend tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars on products that supposedly help us stay young. I don't even want to think about what could be done with that money if we didn't spend it chasing the fountain of youth. Many, many people have written about the United States' addiction to youth. For me one of the clearest critical voices on this issue has been Naomi Wolf. Her book, The Beauty Myth, reveals how this cultural dynamic plays out in the lives of women, and how the way women relate to the so-called beauty industry has all the hallmarks of ritual and worship we associate with religion. Of course, men also confront the constant bombardment of ads designed to make us think we can maintain our youth. What is the similarity between this industry and religions that promise eternal life? They both keep us from paying attention to the reality of our deaths. It's the same outcome. We are encouraged not to take dying seriously and as a result we fail to take our living seriously. "Vanity of vanities," says Ecclesiastes, "all is vanity." It is sheer vanity to act as if we can maintain our youth. It is sheer vanity to act, for any reason, as if we can cheat death.

Whatever happened to eat right, get enough sleep, and exercise? We all know this very basic wisdom, which is much cheaper than hair plugs and anti-wrinkle cream. But I don't bring it to our attention to help us stay young. I bring it to our attention to help us age well. Aging is the one thing we do consistently from the moment of our births, and we have no choice in the matter. Life's like an hourglass glued to the table. Let's be honest with ourselves: we only have so much time in these bodies. Let us not deny the reality of our deaths. Let us embrace death so that we may live well.

Sounds easy when I say it. Let us embrace death. How do you do that? It's hard to look at our own deaths. We heard earlier from Ecclesiastes. I think it would have been hard to be one of Ecclesiastes' students-no shying away from death there. Ecclesiastes speaks of that time in our lives when the guards of the house (the arms) tremble, and the strong men (the legs) are bent, and the women who grind (the teeth) cease working because they are few, and those who look through the windows (the eyes) see dimly; when the doors on the street are shut (I'm not sure I want to say what that one might refer to), and the sound of the grinding is low (the ears) and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low; when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road."² Even without this allegorical reading, the passage is pretty blunt. Your body deteriorates, and then in time "the dust returns to the earth as it was." Don't look at me. I didn't say it. Ecclesiastes said it. It's hard to look directly at death.

I find one bit of inspiration in this scripture. Ecclesiastes says "the breath returns to God who gave it." I hear it this way: the dust of my body returns to the earth as it was, but before that my living body is home to something sacred, something part and parcel of the divine: breath, wind, spirit, that which animates. This breath does not belong to me. It belongs to the divine. But while it is in my possession, while I am the steward of this breath, I will honor it. I will nurture and protect it. I will live a life that matters.

Philip Simmons names our relentless flow towards death in one, short phrase. He calls it "life's calamitous downhill rush."³ Some of you know Simmons wrote the essays in Learning to Fall in response to his impending death from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. He learned of his disease at age 35 as a young husband and father. He confronted death, simultaneously frightened and fearless. And if his writing is any indication, in confronting death, he learned how to live. He says so many beautiful and profound things-I wish I could quote the entire book to you. He says, "When we can stand calmly in the face of our passing away, when we have the courage to look even into the face of a child and say, 'This flower, too, will fade and be no more,' when we can sense the nearness of death and feel its rightness equally with birth, then we will have crossed over to that farther shore where death can hold no fear for us, where we will know the measure of the eternal that is ours in this life."⁴

Just as breath connects Ecclesiastes to the divine, breath is also Simmons' path to such connection. In the passage we heard earlier, Simmons points out: "Our word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus or 'breath'; in returning to the breath, we return to spirit, we hear the winter wind, we allow ourselves to cool into the winter mind, we prepare for the fall into emptiness. And in touching emptiness we touch the source, the spring, the creative power out of which the universe flows at every moment."⁵ Breathing is not only a reference to the divine. It is the motion and the rhythm of the divine in us. Coming to such a realization in the face of death leads us back to life, to a resolve to live meaningfully, to live a life that matters.

How do we do it? How do we look death in the face and say welcome? How do we live knowing we must some day die? I can't say I have answers to these questions, at least not with any sense of completeness. But I do know where to begin. We are all like cars on the track, we can't jump the cable. Life is like an hourglass glued to the table. No one can find the rewind button now. So cradle your head in your hands, and just breathe.

When you finally realize you can't pick it up off the table and turn it over, just breathe.
When you realize you may be falling, just breathe.
When you discern life's calamitous downhill rush, just breathe.
When you look in the mirror and realize, my body, my strength, my energy all will decline, just breathe.
When the advertisements bring out your deepest insecurities about beauty and aging and body shape, and there's no teacher around to remind you all is vanity, just breathe.
In the days when the guards of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, just breathe.
When the women who grind cease working because they are few, and those who look through the windows see dimly, just breathe.
When the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of the grinding is low, just breathe.
When one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low, just breathe.
When one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road, just breathe.
Because all must go to their eternal home, just breathe.
And as we breathe we touch the source, the spring, the creative power out of which the universe flows at every moment.
And as we breathe we begin to sense the truth of beating hearts, pulsing blood, crashing tides, and the moon so apparently making its way across the clear, crisp autumn night sky.
And as we breathe we remember what a precious gift life is.
And as we breathe we remember the ancestors. We remember who we are, where we've come from, and what truly matters.
Just breathe.
In and out. In and out. Always. Always. Always.
Just breathe, so that may we come to know, in the end, all souls are dry, beautiful leaves, swirling in wind, gently bound for spinning earth.
Just breathe, because the breath returns to the divine from whence it came.
Just breathe. Just breathe. Just breathe.
Amen and Blessed Be.

Extinguishing the Chalice
"We are all-all of us-falling…. [Let us] pray that if we are falling from grace, dear God let us also fall with grace, to grace. If we are falling toward pain and weakness, let us also fall toward sweetness and strength. If we are falling toward death, let us also fall toward life."⁶