“But we all [live] at the edge,”1 says the late spiritual writer Philip Simmons. “We all live at the edge.” We all experience moments when we simultaneously feel the weight and the depth of what has gone before mingling with, to use Simmons’ words, “the onrushing promise—or the threat—of things to come.” 2 We all live at the edge.
I begin with this thought this morning because our congregation is living at an “edge” moment in its history, a moment wherein we feel the presence of what has gone before and the promise of things to come. We feel the years and decades of care, nurture, time, energy and money so many people have put into this congregation so that it would survive and thrive here on Elm Hill in Manchester, east of the Connecticut River; and we feel the countless hours of planning, designing, fundraising, negotiating and decision-making so many people have put into our building expansion project, bringing us to this point of groundbreaking. And, simultaneously, as we bear witness to the felling of trees and the pouring of concrete, we feel the onrushing promise of things to come: a welcoming congregation with a larger, more accessible, greener building; a congregation growing in spiritual depth, generosity and numbers; a congregation whose values more effectively impact struggles for justice and equality in the state and the nation; a beacon of liberal religion burning brightly here on Elm Hill in Manchester, east of the Connecticut River.
We’re living at an edge, and a month from now it’s going to be even edgier. This is an in-between time; some might call it a liminal time; a threshold time. It will be a strange time for us. We’re going to be worshipping in a different sanctuary at a different hour of the day. We’ll be holding meetings and classes in different places. Our offices will be in a different location. We’ll be using worship models that we’ve never used before. We will be the same congregation, but how we do things will be very different. How we experience ourselves will be very different.
One of the reasons people join a congregation—one of the reasons they come back to the same congregation week after week is for the comfort of familiarity. It’s a valid reason. We want to be comfortable when we worship. If we’re carrying a difficult burden and we need a place to lay it down for a while—if we need a place for others to carry it for a while—more than likely we’re going to seek out some place familiar, some place comfortable. But on August 2nd when we begin worshipping at Center Congregational Church (at 11:00 AM), everything will be unfamiliar. Everything will be different. Difference does not typically breed comfort. In fact, difference usually breeds a degree of discomfort. And I suspect, especially in the beginning, there will be some discomfort worshipping at Center Church. This is not to say that the leaders there haven’t been wonderfully welcoming, hospitable and flexible with regard to our needs. They’ve been all these things, and they’re very excited to have us use their space. Nevertheless, it will be different and thus there will be, for us, a measure of discomfort. Living at the edge is inherently uncomfortable, inherently unsettling.
I don’t know for sure, but I suspect one way we will deal with this discomfort—or one way we will at least be tempted to deal with it—is to grit our teeth, close our eyes, hold our breath, and just wait it out, all the time focusing on the future. “When will the construction be done?” “When are we getting back into our building?” “Can we go over and see the progress?” “Oh, please don’t tell me the schedule has slipped again.” “I can’t wait to be back in our own space—our new space—our larger space!” We focus on the future in order to distance ourselves from whatever discomfort we may feel in the present. Here is my message for this morning: Resist the temptation to do this. Resist the temptation to focus on the future at the expense of the present. Imagine that we could have such an exciting time at Center Church, such a profound time, that we won’t want it to end—that when the time comes to return home we will miss Center Church greatly. Some of you are thinking, “Josh, you’re about to go on vacation, it’s the end of the congregational year, you’ve been working really hard, you’re tired, you’re not thinking straight, you don’t know what you’re saying!” But I do. Keep in mind: we will be on hiatus from our building. We will not be on hiatus from our spiritual lives. We will not be on hiatus from our ministries. We will not be on hiatus from our principles. We will not be on hiatus from the bonds that tie us together. Uncomfortable situations, unfamiliar situations, new situations, non-routine situations are unsettling, yes, but they are also opportunities to grow and stretch and deepen our spiritual lives. If we deal with our discomfort by focusing solely on the future, we will miss the opportunities that come with living at the edge.
Thursday night a few of us attended a workshop on pastoral care at Shiloh Baptist Church on Albany Avenue in North Hartford. The point of the workshop was to teach clergy and lay ministers how to respond effectively to victims of gun violence, and then to begin organizing those present into a regional violence response network. One of the presenters was the Rev. Mark McKinney, head of Pastoral Care at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford. Rev. McKinney spoke about “crisis” moments. As an example he spoke about his own experience of undergoing a CT Scan and then having his doctor say, “There’s a suspicious spot on your lung, Rev. McKinney. It could be a cancerous tumor; it could be a shadow from the machine. I’ll let you know tomorrow.” He said it was the most unpleasant 24 hours of his life. He also said he was more awake to the world in those 24 hours than anytime he could remember. He looked at everything with new eyes: his wife, his children, his colleagues, his work, nature. He saw all of it as if for the first time. He very quickly got in touch with the things that truly matter to him. An unpleasant experience, yes; but also an invigorating experience, a deepening experience, a life-affirming experience.
Moving our worship services to Center Church for six months is not a crisis. But it is an opportunity for us to experience ourselves in new ways; to shift our perspective; to say and hear our words in a different sanctuary, with a different shape, with a different echo, a different history. It is an opportunity to encounter each other in a new setting, with the light breaking through different windows at different angles, with a different chorus of noises seeping in from outside—the occasional ambulance screaming towards the hospital instead of birds hunting worms in the morning dew. We have an opportunity to wake up to ourselves and the world in a way that would never happen if we were able to stay here during construction. That is the beauty of edge moments—if we stay with them, if we stay present to them, they wake us up.
But let’s not take this lightly. Let’s not assume this awakening will happen automatically. It is difficult to stay present. It is difficult to stay in the present moment. Philip Simmons reminds us of this. Whether we’re in crisis or not, he writes, “We’re called away from [the present] continually by our earthly pleasures and concerns. Even now you may be thinking it’s time for another cup of coffee and one of those blueberry muffins. Seems it’s always time to be doing something other than what we’re doing at the moment. While reading in your chair, you find yourself thinking about last night’s argument with your spouse; you’re thinking that it’s time to rake the leaves, check your e-mail, get some sleep, get to work, pick up the kids, feed the boa constrictor, water the chickens, exercise the gerbils. The present moment, like the spotted owl, or the sea turtle, has become an endangered species.”3
Philip Simmons was a student of Buddhism and a reader of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk who has dedicated his public life to helping people learn to be present. In his 1991 book, Peace is Every Step, Thich Nhat Hanh said “We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficultly remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.” 4
As a congregation we will have difficulty staying present in our edge moment if we’re distracted by what is different, uncomfortable, and strange about worshipping in a different place, if we focus exclusively on the future, if we allow whatever anxiety we may be feeling to overwhelm our deeper spiritual inclinations, if we keep preparing to live and worship in our newly expanded building, without actually living and worshipping in the one we’re in. Let’s work with each other to resist the temptation to focus on the future. Let’s work with each other to stay focused on the present. For this transition time, this construction time, this edge time, let’s take Philip Simmons’ claim to heart, that “dwelling in the present moment, in the face of everything that would call us out of it, is our highest spiritual discipline.”5
Of course, ‘highest’ does not mean ‘most complicated.’ For me, being in the present moment comes down to breathing: intentional, mindful breathing. We breathe our way into the present moment. And there are so many ways to breathe as a congregation beyond the simple invitation to breathe at the beginning of worship or the beginning of prayer. We sang Sarah Dan Jones’ “Meditation on Breathing” as our opening hymn. When I breathe in, I’ll breathe in peace. When I breathe out, I’ll breathe out love.6 I expect to use this song to keep us present at Center Church. Thich Nhat Hanh has a beautiful four-line breathing recitation: “Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment.”7 I expect to use this recitation at Center Church.
For me, breathing is our primary spiritual act. For so many ancient cultures there was no distinction between breath and spirit. Simmons reminds us “our word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus or ‘breath;’ in returning to the breath,” he says, “we return to spirit . . . 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.”8
Breathing is our constant experience of interdependence, our constant reception of oxygen which our bodies convert into energy—into motion, thought and feeling; oxygen created in the cells of green plants and algae in response to their reception of sunlight.
I conceive of breathing as one of the essential rhythms of divinity, both literally and metaphorically, the movement of spirit in us, tied to beating hearts, pulsing blood, crashing tides, the waxing and waning moon, the long hours of daylight on this summer solstice, the sun bright and close in the northern sky as earth completes yet another cycle. The present moment holds all of this. Indeed, the more we learn how to be truly present, the more we breathe with the intention of being present, the more we perceive a great paradox of the spiritual life. Not in the past, not in the future, but in the present moment we glimpse eternity. Each tiny, brief, fleeting moment of our lives holds within it a glimmer of the eternal. Philip Simmons explains it this way: “Dwelling in the present, at least at first, involves forgetting the past and the future, stopping the mind’s whirlwind of memory and expectation, giving ourselves a blessed hour’s calm as we meditate, bake bread, walk through the forest, or play games with a child. But with further practice we may find past and future returning to our awareness, only now without bringing anxiety or distraction along with them. Instead, we become aware of living in eternity, knowing that this moment has found its proper place in the stream of time. When we feel this way, the present moment enlarges, draws past and future into it, until we are dwelling not just in the moment, but within the whole of life.”9
This is an edge moment for our congregation. It is an edge moment in our lives. Let’s not miss it. Let’s not miss all the opportunities for growth and depth that edge moments provide. Let us breathe deeply. Let us, as the hymn says, “find a stillness, find the silence, in the spirit.” 10 Let us find in each moment some measure of the eternal, so that when the time comes to return to our newly expanded building, we will not be exhausted and in need of rediscovering ourselves, but rather more refreshed, more alive, more awake, more wise.
Welcome to the edge, my friends. May we live well here. May we breathe deeply here. May we be present here.
Amen and Blessed Be.
1 Simmons, Philip, “Living at the Edge,” in Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life (New York: Bantam Books, 2000) p. 145.
2Ibid., p. 144.
3Ibid., p. 145
4Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step (New York: Bantam Books, 1992) p. 5.
5Simmons, Learning to Fall, p. 145.
6Jones, Sarah Dan, “Meditation on Breathing,” in Singing the Journey (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 2005) #1009.
7Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step, p. 10.
8 Simmons, Learning to Fall, p. 113.
9Simmons, Learning to Fall, p. 147.
10Seaburg, Carol, “Find a Stillness” in Singing the Living Tradition (Boston: UUA, 1993) #352.
