Reading: Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limon
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
Sermon: Life Saving There is more to the story about my bully dog and my crocuses. Another way to tell the story. It goes like this.
In the summer of 2019, I took an almost four month sabbatical. During that time, I spent hours and hours, every day, in my garden. I cleaned and pruned and weeded and watered. I paid attention. Which is the core act of gardening. Or maybe it is the core act of anything.
I understand, from this time, the gift of becoming intensely focused on one thing. Early on, plenty of work came from this focus. Weeding and sorting and watering and moving rocks. But by midseason, often days there was nothing to do, but the watching, and the noticing. Such a ridiculously small part of the universe in the scheme of things, to give so much attention to, and yet in the attention, the magnitude of this seemingly small thing often felt overwhelming. There were not enough hours in the day for all that needed my attention.
I would like to say the process itself was the reward, the time and focus and discipline of the practice. The relationship I felt between this tiny patch of the earth and my body, my life. And it was. And also, the change that came, the results, the flourishing and the flowering – the abundance that came in response to my attention was even better. -I confess I was very pleased with myself.
As the season ended, so did my sabbatical. My spiritual director and friends all talked with me about the shift to smaller encounters with the garden, now that my focus would turn back to church and our work together. For a few weeks, in the transitions, it seemed possible. It was then that I planted those crocuses. Along with daffodils and iris.
But, well, I’ve always had a hard time with small bites of attention. I tend more towards all, or nothing. So as winter came, I looked at the garden less, and also winter shifted what the garden was, as it does. My waning attention meant, I didn’t know it as well, couldn’t say for sure all that was happening. This is where the chaos began.
I trusted though, that as spring returned, so would the abundance – as it usually does.
And it was true, mostly. Spring 2020 arrived, and along with the global pandemic came again the flowers, and the flourishing. But this time, I could not return the glory with attention. There just wasn’t though time.
And the less attention I gave, the less attention I gave.
I mean, I knew how much work it would be to start again,
to tend in the ways I had.
I just couldn’t bear to keep looking closely;
it felt like a promise I couldn’t keep.
And then came our sweet bully. We adopted Archer our American Bull Dog-Basset Hound Mastiff mix in April, and over the summer he grew, and grew, and grew. Archer loved the garden too, it turned out – but for different reasons. It was a wonderful playground. He jumped and leaped and dug and chewed. And it looked so fun, our other dog Charlie joined him. They loved the chaos so much, they made more of it, and then more, and more. And then somehow, the seasons turned, until here we are, in the spring of 2022.
Where it is true, the crocuses persist, and around them, there is now this mess that was for a time, stunning, verdant, promising. Already beautiful, and also, on the way towards something even better it seemed. So that the mess it is now disappoints not just because of the work it would take in this season to re-set, but also because of this idea of continuous progress that – despite my understanding that time is not linear, something in me believed. So it is a loss is not just of what was, but also what hadn’t yet been, and by now could have been. The next good thing, the even better.
This is a story about more than my garden, of course. Because there is a mess we all find ourselves in now. It is a shocking mess, a heartbreaking mess, because so many of us put in so much work; sacrificed, and tended, and for a while there was goodness, results, progress. And we had such beautiful plans.
Now, sometimes when we talk about such things – we can lose something in generalities. We lose the particular, and the personal.
So I want to say a few words that are personal, by talking about my own slice of the mess in this moment.
As many of you know, my family has been through a rough few months. Like many other families with kids in schools, we had COVID in January, which was not fun, and also left us more vulnerable – I mean mostly, emotionally.
We were grateful for our vaccines, and boosters, and the seeming randomness of this virus that in our case, the physical experience of COVID was not the worst.
As we near the mark of one million death from the virus in the US in just the last two years, we count ourselves very lucky.
And still, we came to February depleted, and after three weeks with one or more of us ill, we needed to catch up with school, and work, and life. And so we did what we could, but then a few other really hard things happened, and suddenly there was this mess in the middle of the greater collective mess.
I am being vague because there are three other people in my family whose privacy I want to respect, so I just will say, for me, the last three weeks have included some of the hardest moments in my life.
And what I have come to realize in this time is that our family is not unusual. So many people are short fused, and afraid, and under-resourced, and carrying so much grief and disconnection. I mean, I am no longer surprised when I hear about one of our members, or our youth going inpatient for mental health care. It has become in recent years, regular.
There’s a lot of mess.
I share these personal pieces for two reasons. First, because I want to say thank you to all of you, and to Sean, and Elaine, and the whole staff team, who all made it possible for me to take a sudden extra week of leave beyond the week we’d planned for spring break. The space, and time to tend to things was so important.
And second, because I think it is important to name that the mess I’m trying to describe today is not generic, or news that happens “out there”.
It is something personal, and particular, and different for each of us – and yet also all a part of all of us, in this thread of life that connects us.
A thread that is not just flowering trees and baby bunnies and beauty; it is also forest fires and drought and despair.
As Mary Oliver wrote, “If God exists, he isn’t just butter and good luck. He’s also the tick that killed my wonderful dog Luke….he isn’t just church and mathematics. He’s the many desperate hands, cleaning and preparing their weapons. The leaf of grass, the genius, the politician, the poet.”
We are held together in a great web of interconnection, and it is a web of both pain, and pleasure; mundane, and miracle.
Like many of you, I grew up with stories about seeds and planting as lessons for life.
Especially I remember the story told multiple times in Christian scripture, about the farmer who scattered seeds in good soil, rocky soil, hard soil. The seed on hard soil is eaten by birds. The seed on rocky soil grows fast, but dies prematurely because the roots were too shallow. Some young plants are strangled by weeds, but finally some seed finds a home in productive soil and grows to produce good fruit.
Of all the many lessons I took from this story growing up, the one that took was that in order for anything to flourish, you need to put in the work. You can’t just toss things out randomly, or carelessly.
You need to prepare the earth, tend to it, be intentional. Focus. Sacrifice. And then, from all of your work, life grows.
This is a story of life being mostly – up to us.
There is a lot of truth in this story, a lot of important lessons that are core to our faith, and our culture.
Any gardener knows how important preparation is. How the off-season clean up and turning sets the stage long before any seed hits the soil. And after the planting, there is a vigilance required, especially for young plants, weeds, relentless and creative, strangle and choke and make life impossible.
It’s one of the reasons my current garden is such a heartbreak, right? Because I can see how much work is ahead.
With this story as a framework for life, it is hard not to see our current state as something other than our collective – and even our personal failure. Like we were careless, let the seed fall onto rocks, or in with the weeds. And, it is hard not to imagine that our salvation rests anywhere but in doubling down on our efforting, and our sacrifice. Which is a grueling proposition.
I mean, I’m not even sure I know what to do to save my little world, literally and metaphorically, you saw the state of my garden!
And if my mess is echoed in a lot of other people’s lives right now – I mean, why and how should we believe there’s any hope for the whole world to be saved by our effort?
You might remember there is another story about seeds, told not too far after the other one in the gospel of Mark. Once again a farmer throws seeds onto the earth, and then day and night, as the farmer works on other things, and as the farmer sleeps, the seeds sprout and climb out into the light, even though the farmer doesn’t understand how. It’s as though the soil itself produced the grain – from a sprouted stalk, to ripened fruit.
For as much as I know how much my effort matters, I also know, when it comes to gardening, and life, there’s a lot that’s happening that doesn’t have to do with me. A life force that has an insistence I cannot comprehend. As Ada Limon writes, “the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us. A return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us.”
When my daughter first arrived, she came home from the hospital when she was just two days old. And she was so tiny, and vulnerable, and we were so scared, and like a lot of first time parents, we checked on her constantly. I remember one of our good friends saying to us at one point, her life force is strong. Her impetus is to live. We didn’t need to do anything – it was in her. Parenthood teaches us a lot about all that is beyond our control, including about this mysterious force of life that persists through the mess of us.
This is the truth that Paul Hawkins invites us to center around in his book – and the glorious website that goes along with it at regeneration.org. Rather than continuing on in our efforting, and in all of these extractive and transactional relationships, he invites us to put life back at the center of our lives.
Rather than directly solving the problems that we face – cleaning up the mess, he invites us to join in partnership with this practice he calls regeneration.
“Regeneration,” Hawkins writes, “means putting life at the center of every action and decision. It applies to all of creation. Grasslands, farms, people, fish, westlands, oceans – and it applies equally to families, communities, governments. Nature and humanity are composed of exquisitely complex networks for relationships without which forests, lands oceans, peoples, countries, and cultures perish.Our planet and youth are telling us the same story. Vital connections have been severed between human beings and nature; within nature itself; and between people, religions, governments, and commerce. This disconnection is the source of the crisis.”
In this moment, and this age, where I know and I feel our temptation to respond to this mess with overwhelm and even more disconnection, Hawkins and his work invite us instead to reconnect. Reconnect with ourselves, and with our neighbors, and with the earth. To bring the world back to life by bringing ourselves back to life.
So, what brings you to life?
In the everyday human meaning of that phrase, (the way you likely answered the community time question) – as in, what wakes you up and gets you energized and hopeful?
But I also ask this what brings you to life as in the greater sense, like, what connects you with LIFE in an ultimate sense? What brings you to LIFE?
After the service, I invite you to spend some time brainstorming your answers to this question from both angles. What brings you to life? And throughout the week, you might notice other things and add them to your list.
And then imagine what it would mean to make these things the center – not just of your life, but at the center of our collective life. Rather than efforting our way towards salvation, we’d just make our way to life, and keep turning towards life, and keep turning us all towards life. This is the path of regeneration, and it is the path of life saving life.
Like the green leaves that will come in these coming weeks, and over and over keep coming in our world – a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despitethe mess of us, the hurt, the empty.
Fine then,
Let us imagine ourselves saying together –
Fine then. We’ll take it.
As the new slick leaf
Unfurls like a fist to an open palm,
we’ll take it all.
Another Possibility 