No Regrets
a sermon given by Cricket Potter
on Sunday , March 11, 2007
at The First Parish in Lincoln
“I wept. And I said to myself:
‘What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?’”
-Antonio Machado
READINGS:
1. Our first reading this morning is from the author Dawna Markova and her book entitled I Will Not Die an Unlived Life. She wrote a poem after her father died what seemed to her an unlived life. As she explains, “My father died with a shrug. His heart was hollow and vacant of dreams. . . . I felt so fragile and alone that night, wondering what my father’s life had been about . . . . I sat with my worn journal and blue fountain pen in my lap, looking for the relief that only writing can bring me. . . . My hand picked up the pen and words began to flow out.” Here is her poem:
I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
2. Our second reading is a modern interpretation of the twenty-third Psalm written by poet, professor, and Unitarian Universalist minister John Young. I love this interpretation because it takes the focus on God as shepherd and protector of our lives and turns that focus onto the world around us as a profound source of grace. In Young’s rendition, we experience the fullness of life by opening up to the power and beauty of life. In this, he believes, we can find strength and comfort even in the darkest of times. Here is his interpretation of the twenty-third Psalm:
By the grace of this world, we live.
We are fed by the green fields;
We drink and wash ourselves in its rushing waters.
When we stop to touch and be touched by nature,
Our Spirits are restored.
Nature can help us understand the paths to virtue.
We shall die, and tragedy will befall us,
But the light we have discovered or reflected will live on.
One day of life, understood in it fullness, satisfies perfectly.
Practice goodness and mercy,
And open yourselves to these aspects of the world,
And your cup will overflow.
Eight years ago I had an accident that changed my life.
I was in an equestrian competition,
my horse and I galloping over a course and jumping our way to a likely victory,
when my horse stumbled badly on the landing after a particularly big jump.
Propelled from the saddle without a moment to react, I landed on my back with an excruciating force
and with the hooves of my 1200-pound horse just missing my head and neck..
My first thought was of the actor Christopher Reeve
who had had a similar accident just months before and,
while lucky to be alive at the time, was confined to a wheelchair and full life support.
I panicked and in desperation tried to stand up just to prove to myself that my fate would be different.
In a wobbly, delirious kind of way, I did stand up
and then promptly fell down passing out from the pain.
The rest of that day and night remain much of a morphine-induced haze for me.
I was triaged at the local hospital’s Emergency Room,
then rushed to a larger, better equipped hospital for more specialized testing and care.
Then, after more tests determined that immediate surgery was not called for,
I was wheeled into a private room to wait out the few remaining hours of the night
until a team of neurologists and orthopedists could confer in the morning.
What I remember most as I lay in the dark, alone in my hospital room
was facing the painful and shocking realization that my life could have just ended.
I could have died, just like that, at age 38.
As I sat in the dark, unable to run away from this realization, I experienced a whirlwind of emotions
as I tried to take in that I was indeed alive but badly broken.
I was scared beyond belief.
I was also dejected and, finally, sobered.
God, did I hurt.
What had I done?
And where would I go from here?
As the night turned into morning, nurses came in to tend to me.
Then doctors arrived with their entourage of students.
And finally my family came as did an onslaught of flowers with loving cards
and phone messages from well-wishing friends.
I took it all in as if watching a movie of myself.
Was this all really happening to me?
Was there some rewind button I could push to get back to that moment of my fall
so that I could replay that moment but with a different outcome?
The second night in the hospital,
as I lay there in my newly fitted back brace that was to keep my back
and its three fractured vertebrae immobile,
and as I took in the reality that my life would never be the same,
I had a gradual a-ha moment.
I realized that I had been like a race horse with blinders on (those flaps they put on a race horse’s bridle
to keep them from seeing anything around them but the track directly in front of them).
I had been charging forward in my thirty-something invincibility
with little thought to the bigger picture and to where I was really going.
I had set aside my dreams of both family and ministry
and had settled for easier work and the freedom of the unattached life.
Gradually, it dawned on me that I was being given a second chance at things,
and I didn’t want to blow it this time.
And how lucky I was to be given a second chance at the ripe old age of 38.
Because, so often we do get in a rut.
We can let life just take us along.
We are oblivious to the gentle whispers of the heart and the subtle movements of grace.
We can live what Dawna Markova calls an unlived life --
a life lived narrowly, tightly, even fearfully.
After all, there is so much coming at us –
family pressures, financial pressures, career pressures –
that sometimes it’s easier just to block things out and go on auto-pilot to get through.
For many of us, it takes the death of someone we love or perhaps our own near death
to stop and see that we are not in a competition or a race to be won.
Only then do we realize that there is so much more to be lived, learned, loved, and embraced –
a life to be lived fully.
What I appreciate about the images in Markova’s poem
is that they are not about happiness, per say, or even success – all superficial and fleeting things.
Instead, her images of a life well lived are about intentionality, openness, joy.
As she writes:
I choose to inhabit my days,
To allow my living to open me,
To make me less afraid,
More accessible;
To loosen my heart
Until it becomes a wing,
A torch, a promise.
Her images are also about courage – something that, with hindsight,
I can see that I was lacking in the years leading up to my accident.
It takes courage to look at one’s life and admit to areas where one is holding back or holding on.
It takes courage to open oneself up, be willing to risk more, give more, receive more.
It takes courage to reach out and ask for help or forgiveness, to offer forgiveness,
or simply to offer of yourself in a more attentive way.
It’s downright scary.
And I’m learning that it’s utterly essential.
It’s essential for me if I want to live a life that is bolder and more meaningful –
a life, ultimately, with few if any regrets.
And living such a life is admittedly fresh on my mind right now
as I process all that I learned and shared recently in a ministers’ seminar on “Death and Dying.”
The first thing our facilitator said was, “We all live in the light of death.”
We all live in the light of death.
It is something I have been sitting with a lot these past few weeks in my prayers,
in my conversations with some of you,
and in my time preparing for this sermon.
Death is a reality we cannot avoid.
Our time on this earth is limited.
We all will have to reckon with how we used -- or didn’t use -- our time.
And in that final reckoning, don’t we all want to look back with few, if any, regrets?
Don’t we want to feel that we have given all that we can, loved deeply, tried our very best,
and been open to all that life has to offer us in its richness?
At least, that’s my vision of a life well lived.
And truly, religion itself is about how to live fully.
It’s about learning to be our best selves and live in relationship with the divine
or what we claim to be of utmost importance to us.
Secular writing also abound on this very topic.
As I prepared for this sermon,
I looked at a sampling of the many resources out there, and I came across endless how-to lists.
These included:
the one mantra to recite every morning before getting up,
the three aspects of living fully,
the four ways to live from the heart,
the five words to guide you through the day,
the ten questions to answer in order to discover your true path,
and so on.
In my opinion, all those pages and stories, ideas and lists, seemed to boil down to one basic point:
the importance of being attentive – truly attentive – to your heart and to the gift of life itself.
From that place, we are opened up and called to all that makes up a life well lived —
discovery, passion, joy,
hope, love, gratefulness, forgiveness.
We start – intentionally, patiently, and compassionately –
by opening up to all that stirs in us and all that wants to speaks to us
if only we could listen with the ear of the heart.
We start, in the words of the psalmist, by engaging with the fullness life has to offer us.
We start by stopping to touch and be touched by the world.
For then the psalmist writes, our cup will overflow.
Not to say that any of this will rid our lives of tragedy or pain, because it won’t.
Just as the 23rd Psalm tells us, we will face hardships.
And so we have our loved ones, our friends,
and our amazing community here to draw strength and insight from.
This is where we each can start – or take the next step perhaps– in being less afraid and more receptive.
This is where we can build our faith and share in our hope.
All these connections and resources help us, to feel less alone,
and have the courage to inhabit our days more fully.
So, as I look out at all of you this morning,
I wonder what Dawna Markova’s words and those of the psalmist mean for you.
What can you do to live your life more openly and fully?
How and where can you stop to touch and be touched?
In what ways can you loosen your heart so that it can become a wing, a torch, a promise?
As I lay in the hospital some eight years ago with a broken back,
I started to faced u to how I’d been avoiding the things I ultimately felt most called to:
becoming a mother and completing my path to ministry.
I had been biding my time I realized, hoping to find an easier way, one with less risks, less demands.
And yes, at times both callings have been difficult.
They have asked me to stretch and give in ways I didn’t know I could.
Yet, I am here and I am so grateful for all of you and the experiences we have had together.
I have a beautiful daughter who is happily ensconced in her church school class up the hill.
I wouldn’t have it any other way --
even as I continue to wrestle with the challenges.
Even as I continue to work on loosening my heart to the ways I can give and receive.
It is an ongoing process of asking, listening, and responding.
And frankly, I don’t have all the answers – as if we ever do.
I believe that part of our human journey is not knowing all the answers
but going forward anyways in hope and in faith.
As one of my saints, the poet Mary Oliver, offers:
I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
Truly I know our part is not knowing,
But looking, and touching, and loving…
May we stop to look, touch, and love.
May we be open to all that life has to offer us.
May we embrace that fullness
so that we can live a life of no regrets.
Amen.