A sermon by Deacon Dave Skidmore, August 29, 2010
Reading: Psalm 90
A recent visit to my daughter at college in Richmond started me musing about the passage of time. Marsha and I very much enjoyed spending an afternoon with Emily, and with her roommate Tina. Both are vibrant, intelligent young women--pretty and witty. But, as parents are wont to do, I sat across a restaurant table from this young woman--familiar and in some ways not so familiar--and thought of all the past Emilys I have known: Emily the baby--sleeping in her crib, Emily the toddler her hands in fingerpaint, Emily the elementary school student in her Brownie uniform, Emily the junior-high-schooler running on a soccer field, Emily the teenager singing in the school play.
As we walked near the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University, I also remembered my own long-ago college days, and my college self. Seeing old sofas on the porches of student houses and the remains of the past evening's parties on the lawns, watching students strolling around--some laid-back and shaggy, some impossibly cool--brought it all back. I could almost feel again what it felt like to be a college student. And so, in the midst of this happy time, there was a passing moment of sadness. It was a recognition of loss. Emily the child, a doll in each hand, absorbed in creating a conversation between the two, is gone. She is a memory. Gone too is Dave the happy-go-lucky college student. (OK--full disclosure--I don't think I was ever happy go lucky--but I'm speaking in relative terms.) My college days--the days of hanging out on lazy summer-term weekends with similarly unburdened friends--are gone as surely as Emily's childhood. And, as many of us do at family gatherings, I thought of family members no longer alive. I knew my mother and father both would have liked to have known this engaging young college woman who is their granddaughter.
Such bouts of nostalgia and twinges of sadness during happy events are, I think, a common experience. From the moment we mature enough to become aware of time passing, we acquire the capacity to regret that it has passed. It's not just an experience for the middle-aged and old. A 14-year-old caught up in the turmoil of adolescence is quite capable of yearning for the simpler days of elementary school. Young parents, with children demanding their attention during every waking moment, may yearn to return to a time when they were single and free to come and go as they pleased. Time like an ever-rolling stream--in the words of our opening hymn--not only bears us all away in the end--it bears away our past selves even as we live into becoming new selves.
That all sounds kind of depressing. But wait--it gets worse! Not only can we not go back--we can't return to being college students, young parents, or some other younger version of ourselves--we cannot even remember most of the lives we already have lived. Though a walk around Emily's campus in Richmond vividly evoked memories of what it felt like to be a college student, I cannot actually recall most of the day-to-day events I experienced at Penn State 30-plus years ago--let alone what I had for lunch last Tuesday. (And, no, my lack of recollection has nothing--well, very little--to do with how much beer I consumed in college.)
At this point, you might be wondering: "What is the point of this sermon?" Is the point: We live, we grow old, we forget stuff, we die? Actually, yes. In part that is the point of the sermon. We do grow old, we do forget, we do die. The question is--what do we do about that? The answer is--we live.
Let me illustrate my point with a "teaching" from a book Lillie lent me entitled, "Comfortable with Uncertainty," by Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist nun. The title of the teaching is, "Experience Your Life."
A woman is running from tigers. She runs and she runs, and the tigers are getting closer and closer. She comes to the edge of a cliff. She sees a vine there, so she climbs down and holds on to it. Then she looks down and sees that there are tigers below her as well. At the same time, she notices a little mouse gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries emerging from a nearby clump of grass. She looks up, she looks down, and at the mouse. Then she picks up a strawberry, pops it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.
Tigers above, tigers below. This is the predicament we are always in. We are born and sooner or later we die. Each moment is just what it is. Resentment, bitterness, and holding a grudge prevent us from seeing and hearing and tasting and delighting. This might be the only moment of our life, this might be the only strawberry we'll ever eat. We could feel depressed about this or we could finally appreciate it. We could delight in the preciousness of every single moment.
I draw a number of lessons from the story of the woman and the tigers. Let me take them in turn. First, you cannot go back. Why? In the case of this Buddhist parable, it's obvious. Hungry tigers await. But, literature and life are replete with proof that--as the title of the Thomas Wolfe novel says, "You Can't Go Home Again." A little bit of nostalgia is benign enough, but attempts to remain forever young or relive one's youth always fail. Two examples from literature come to mind. Most of us know about the Oscar Wilde novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray." A vain young man, intent on pursuing a life of pleasure, wishes that his portrait would age while he remains young. He gets his wish. He lives a life of cruelty and debauchment; as the portrait grows grotesque, he remains youthful until, in a fit of remorse for the life he has led, he destroys the painting and ages and dies all at once.
For the second example, I have to put the word "literature" in quotes. There's a children's book, "Love You Forever," which many people seem to love. I wonder if any of the parents here today know it. It's one of the all-time best-selling children's books. It starts out heartwarming, but in my view turns sort of creepy. A mother rocks her baby to sleep and sings, "I'll love you forever." But, as the years pass, she keeps doing it. There's a picture in the book of the mother, now a much older woman, driving to the home of her adult son--a ladder strapped to the roof of her car--so she can climb into his bedroom window and secretly sing her lullaby. It is a good thing he appears to be single. Talk about not being able to let go. But the truth is, an old woman cannot be a young mother and a middle-aged man cannot live the life of a 20-year-old college student. (Thank, God.) And a parent cannot--or should not--treat a grown child as if they were a baby. It would be horribly destructive for the child--and to the parent-child relationship. And, by trying to exactly preserve the past relationship with a son or daughter who was no longer a child, the parent would lose the pleasure of forming a new relationship with the adult their son or daughter had become.
Another lesson I draw from the story of the woman and the tigers--the most obvious one, I suppose--is that we must not let the memory of bad things of the past or the knowledge of bad things to come--tigers above, tigers below; loss, illness, death--destroy the pleasures of life. The woman could have just waited in despair until she lost her grip and fell to the tigers below, or for the mouse to gnaw through the vine. But she didn't. She ate a strawberry. A less obvious lesson, perhaps, is that without a present awareness of eventual mortality, the strawberry would not have tasted so sweet. If she somehow had the power to block the tigers out of her awareness and forget about the mouse, she would have taken the strawberry for granted and would not have appreciated its sweetness.
So if the answer to the problem of mortality is to live in the moment--to pluck and eat the strawberry--it gives rise to another question: "How should we live in those moments?" Should we live with the motto "Carpe Strawberry" and eat as many strawberries as we can? Well, it is good to eat strawberries, no doubt. But, I believe we are called to that and something more. The 90th Psalm, which Marti read this morning, offers some insight. It is labeled, "a prayer of Moses." The psalmist, whether Moses or someone else, first marvels that a thousand years are but a watch in the night to God and then calls on God to "teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart," to offer us "steadfast love so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days," and to "prosper the work of our hands." Thus, the psalmist implies, with God it is possible to rejoice and be glad, even knowing that "our years come to an end like a sigh." And it is God who gives meaning to "the work of our hands."
Exactly what is our work? We each need to decide for ourselves--not just once, but very probably many times. At 20, we may be called to study and prepare for a career. At 30, we might be called to be a parent. At 53, we may be called to marry--again. At 75, who knows? But it probably will be something different than it was at age 20 or 30.
It takes strength and wisdom to persevere in our work and other endeavors, and find gladness in the face of loss and the certain knowledge that the days of our life "are soon gone, and we fly away." The 90th Psalm offers us consolation and hope in its poetic evocation of God's eternal nature. Matthew Henry, the early 18th century English Presbyterian minister, summarized in a single sentence what for me is the key message of the 90th Psalm: "All the events of a thousand years, whether past or to come, are more present to the Eternal Mind, than what was done in the last hour is to us."
As we live, I hope we can cultivate an awareness that, though God turns us back to dust, we also, in the words of the Apostle Paul, "live and move and have our being" in God and, in the words of the psalmist, God has been "our dwelling place in all generations." If we live in God and God is "from everlasting to everlasting," then all these moments that we cannot remember, all the selves we no longer are, all the loved ones we wish by our side again, are (in some sense that we are not given to fully understand) "from everlasting to everlasting" as well.
May this awareness make us glad, give meaning to all the endeavors of our lives, and make the strawberries oh so sweet.
* * *
Permit me to end on a light note. Since I'm filling in for Lillie--and Lillie is from East Texas, and often draws on the wisdom of country music--it seems appropriate to conclude by quoting from a new song by Tift Merritt, a country singer from Houston. She sings, "You must live till you die, you must fight to survive. You must live till you die, you got to feel to be alive. You must live till you die."
May it be so. Amen.
* * *
Psalm 90
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
You turn us back to dust, and say, "Turn back, you mortals."
For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night.
You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning;
in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.
For we are consumed by your anger; by your wrath we are overwhelmed.
You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance.
For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh.
The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.
Who considers the power of your anger? Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.
So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.
Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants!
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil.
Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands- O prosper the work of our hands!
Posted by Sue Mosher at August 30, 2010 11:01 AM