TO BE GRATEFUL

A Sermon by James Ishmael Ford

18 November 2001

This has been a difficult season. Yesterday something more than five hundred people filled this room to celebrate and mourn the life and death of our dear friend and member, Dennis Kennedy. For me there was something in that little more than an hour and a half, which spoke to all the anxieties and difficulties we’ve been experiencing these last months marked as they have been by recession and echoes of terror. Somehow as we mourned Dennis, I felt all the waves of personal loss that have marked these months so intimately that it was hard to bear.

And then, remarkably, that wasn’t the end of the day. From that event, a fair number of us went on to a welcoming potluck for our recent visitors here at the First Unitarian Society. It was a long planned, although small celebration in anticipation of our receiving our new members today.

Then as I reflected on the juxtaposition of these events, I saw how something powerful was playing out. Against a backdrop of these difficult times, these events have been demonstrations of how much we need each other. In fact that potluck was a particularly sweet time, an expression of something amazing. As they say, good food and good company. But also something more, tired as many of us were, it was definitely a worthwhile experience of something more.

So, what might be this more? For me, somehow, all this together; the difficult economics, the echoes of September 11th, the mourning of a wonderful man who died much too soon, the welcoming of new members into our community, and even that small act of passing out the collection boxes for the UUSC; speaks to the naked joy of our existence. Joy. I realized this is in fact about the mystery and energy that in our culture we put into our great secular holiday of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving. I really love Thanksgiving. I mean I love the whole thing. I love the fact that the major focus is getting together with the family and eating. Oh, and as a brief aside, don’t forget this year, if you’re at loose ends, we have a communal Thanksgiving potluck here at the Society. I love the fact that Thanksgiving is about nothing so much as pleasure in the moments of our lives, respite in the rush and worry of existence. It is a celebration of joy.

Of course it is also shadowed and nuanced. In some ways what actually gives it its power is that it is joy in the face of sadness. There is something in knowing that for some among us this is the day one remembers being conquered and how one’s own cultures have been laid to ruin. Here joy exists with echoes of something sad. Here we face the powerful and true. Not always nice, but as we feel it fully, definitely something deep and real.

And so, maybe this holiday can be particularly useful to us in this difficult season we currently inhabit, or maybe more correctly inhabits us. Here we are, washed as we have been in terror and death, the taking up of arms, witnessing the seeds of war thrown wide upon rocky soil. And even our own losses right here and now in our community. Of course it sometimes feel too much.

But then there is Thanksgiving. Here we find hints that there is more here for us, as we allow our hearts to open full. For us, with our hours of sadness and moments of joy: I suggest a reflection on Thanksgiving, and particularly that central emotion of thanksgiving, gratitude can guide us toward something precious and holy.

Now, there are many directions we can go in such a reflection. But, in our brief time together I want to hold us to two. First, there are those simple and pragmatic considerations we should take up in a time like this. Things have been hard. So, how do we actually engage all this so that it is useful for us, and for those whom we love and care about? How do we find joy?

In this first, pragmatic context, I think of that old rabbinic story of the poor man who goes to his rabbi. He tells the rabbi how hard it has been, as his family of eight must make do in a tiny one-room house. "The six children," cries the man. "Roll like the sea. They are in constant motion. My wife and I never have a moment alone. I can’t stand it anymore."

The rabbi says if the man will do exactly as he guides him, he guarantees the man and his wife, as well as his children; all will learn gratitude. The man agrees. So the rabbi asks him how many animals does he own? The man describes the livestock of a small holder in old Middle Europe. This includes chickens, rabbits, a goat, a cow and a horse. The rabbi says, "Move all your livestock into the house."

The man is aghast, but he’s agreed. So, he goes home and does as he’d been instructed. The next day he returns and says, "It is like living in Babel! I can’t imagine it worse. The chicken droppings alone are enough to make you want to throw up" The rabbi says, "Fine. Why don’t you move the chickens back out of the house?" Gratefully the man goes home and does it.

The next day the man returns and says, "Well, the chickens are gone. But the goat! Oh, the goat is horrible. It’s eaten half the only table cloth we own, and it jumps up on top of the chairs and our bed, making havoc everywhere." "Well," the rabbi suggests. "Why don’t you go home and remove the goat?" Which the man does.

The next day he returns and tells the rabbi, "Have you ever lived in a room with a cow? It is too disgusting to describe." "Well," the rabbi says. "Why don’t you remove the cow?" And it goes on, next the rabbits, then the horse. And finally, only the family remains.

The man goes to his rabbi and says, "I don’t understand. But, we are filled with joy and gratitude. Our children are happy and calm. My wife and I are at peace. Thank you."

So, one lesson is that old one of shoes and feet. We don’t know how good we have it, until we notice another’s suffering, or until it really gets bad. And there is a legitimate lesson here. Things can get worse. We should cherish the moment for the good it contains. And in that process it can be worthwhile reflecting on how good we actually have it. Truthfully, it is a rare person in this room who really has it so bad as we sometimes feel.

But, I suggest, there are deeper places we can go than simply realizing how good we have it. So, let me share my second consideration for this day. Drawing again upon the Jewish tradition, I find myself returning to the lessons to be mined from that ancient classic the Book of Job.

There are all these horrors in his life. These are horrors that have no comparison that can make one feel better. In the face of it he cries out to the divine his anguish and fear and demands justice. Job comes one step short of cursing God. That curse he draws short of. But he does rebuke the divine, and bitterly.

Job declares that God "does not care…" And more, Job bitterly laments that the divine "murders both the pure and the wicked. When the plague brings sudden death, he laughs at the anguish of the innocent. He hands the earth to the wicked and blindfolds its judges’ eyes." I’m sure everyone in this room knows this rebuke, and have cried it out to the heavens.

Job looks around at the terror and horror, the profound sadness of our lives and says of God, "Who does it, if not he?" This is the bill of charges; this is the list of horrors. And this is not stuff that can be made better by comparing one’s sadness with another’s.

I am deeply taken with this story, so much harsher and powerful than anything that gives way to a conventional morality, or a simple setting up of comparisons. Not, I rush to add, that there isn’t a place for that kind of engagement on occasion.

That old rabbi’s wisdom is practical. We should count our blessings as we can. But, here, I suggest, as we don’t turn away from the great mess, from the worst things of our lives, from those dreadful events that do not bare comparison; we can stumble upon something profound and true. Here we can find that heaven itself is revealed. Here we can find the truest meaning facing us in this season, this real lived season.

It is at this moment of our deepest despair we might stumble upon an understanding of Thanksgiving that doesn’t turn away from the old genocide, or from the pleasure of a family feast. As we take it whole, we might find the source of a genuine sense of gratitude, something worth praise, indeed.

Kelly Murphy Mason is a Unitarian Universalist seminarian living in New York City. She writes of the 11th of September and how on that day "an angel in a business suit grabbed my hand and ran me through the smoke and ash overtaking Wall Street." An angel in a business suit. How wonderful, how mysterious: how true. We never know where the hand of God will appear, or in what form. Even in the darkest moments something can appear, when we’re ready, when we’re able to see it.

Job, when he raises his anguish straight to the divine, is answered. Not answered with an essay, not answered with a list of reasons. But answered as we all may be in our own dark moments, when our hearts turn, and we give ourselves whole. But we do need to be ready to notice. After all in that old story, the response to Job’s lament seems to be a rebuke. We need to attend carefully.

"Where were you when I planned the earth?/Tell me, if you are so wise./Do you know who took its dimensions,/measuring its length with a cord?/What were its pillars built on?/Who laid down its cornerstone,/while the morning stars burst out singing/and the angels shouted for joy?"

Certainly a superficial reading of this statement and Job’s response is one of a person groveling in the dirt and mud, fearful of the great bully in the sky. But it isn’t. It really isn’t. This mysterious passage is our gateway into joy, the joy of the angels witnessing something astonishing. And it is a witnessing we all can experience.

Without a doubt my favorite commentator on the book of Job is Stephen Mitchell. He says of this moment where Job makes his plea, and its response; that "God will not hear Job, but Job will see God." Here we move beyond the simple frame of comparison and even of good and evil. At such a moment our best reflections, our purest analysis all fall away. Here we move to the deep waters of existence, where every idea is shattered.

And it is at this place where the divine lurks, a monster of our dreams. Here, when we shut up and just notice, we are gifted by a tumble into the divine’s presence, and our dreams are answered. It is here we find angels in business suits, as well as dragons and faerie, and all sorts of mysterious creatures that normally only occupy our dreams, are now revealed whole and true. The world becomes unveiled at such a moment of raw confrontation. And it is big. And it is scary. And we are totally consumed, you and I, in the face of it, like a moth before a fire.

So, what response do we have for such moments? Another Unitarian, e.e. cummings sings of it all. "I thank You God for most this amazing/day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees/and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything/which is natural which is infinite which is yes//(I who have died am alive again today,/and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth/day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay/great happening illimitably earth)//how should tasting touching hearing seeing/breathing any—lifted from the no/of all nothing—human merely being/doubt unimaginable You?/(now the ears of my ears awake and/now the eyes of my eyes are opened)"

At these moments of great sadness, of broken hearts; if we are lucky, we step back, away, mysteriously refreshed, as we could never have dreamed. Out of that experience, out of that full confrontation, we can return to the world of relative, of good and ill, of choices that count, with some new understanding. It is, I suggest, an understanding that allows us to celebrate Thanksgiving for both its joy in family and food, and its sorrow in lost nations. And, I suggest, it is the perfect holiday for these difficult times.

If, that is, we don’t turn away.

So, look. So, feel. So know your whole being.

This is a good day.

Amen.